Consider a house shamed in white siding
on a hill near forest park and the zoo.
Not near Clayton and McCausland, not
central to light in our city, but shaken by Manchester’s trains.
Reckon this house was frayed stories, full of sound
eager kids who liked Goethe, drums, guitars.
Tucked in shag steps, warped wood lining. Imagine
electric sparks when you turn on night light. Perhaps
home is only the beginning, square rooms for us to tend. See giving
over this house, watching it burn. Love comes with carnage,
under alatus bushes and broken dolls, in dreamcatchers, under letters to god. I built
snakes from rocks, ash and clay–looped them round pepper stalks,
eggplant vines, red bricks.