Mother says as she hangs the laundry outside,

Father paints en plein air,

and we girls sweep crumbs under the rug.

This summer, Father sees

Inferno everywhere.

•

No dustups from little girls!

As a consequence, one scribbled

on the dust-bins of history

and the other dusted

for fingerprints. And the mother?

The mother lived in a vacuum.

•

Inside the senseless corridors

the daughter cannot respire.

Inside the vulgar cosmic

the mother cannot be revived

in streaming wet traffic.

•

Nowadays, I lie down in the sunlight

to see my mama

moting around as sympathetic ash.

Yes, one morning whether misty or yellow

I’ll be soot with her—

elegiac and original.

•••

The Old House Speaks

Before I became foundation, I was a chicken-coop aways from farmhouse, carriage house and barn. And around my grounds, someone’s daughter played with her bisque baby. Among stink and chicken feathers. Eggshells. Nests.

I tasted the haze of dandruff and chicken shit. The taste of my own throat.

From my planks and wire I heard the clucks. The coos. The tap-tap tap-tap as the scabby rooster pecked like the son’s paddle-toy.

I wasn’t so much humble as meager. There is nowhere for anywhere except a runaway who kneads the dank, brown, soiled straw.

The farmer’s little girl played with chipped teacups alongside the buzzing kitchen scraps. All converted, finally, into a trash heap.

•

Noisy and noisome. From that rough roost to an indoor-out: branch and ice rip me open. Birds tear into my screens, leave droppings all over my insides.

Did I say a runaway? More recently, down the hill in one family’s garage, the wife turned the car on and fell asleep to the smell of gas—shutting the door to other neighbor’s rat-a-tat-tat.

•

The male raccoon leaves shitty paw prints on the grocery circulars and coupons that flood the floorboards. Even on watercolors left out on a desk. There is nowhere where there is no scat.

After winter torpor, I wince when the raccoon births her kits in a closet.

Some say a raccoon makes over two hundred sounds—and it’s true, I’ve counted as many.

And the mask, reduces glare at night.

And the ringed tail, stores fat for the winter and aids in any balancing act.

And the dousing of food, yes, “wash.”

Funny how the pregnant female kicks out the male.

Yes, where creatures thrive, I cannot breathe—

•

What will become of my kitchen? The room where the now-middle-aged woman, when a toddler, sat in the bright porcelain sink for a sponge bath. One of the few events that she cares to recall while sifting through the rubbish, once her mother’s home, her father’s house. Or was it the inverse?

•••

charms i.

Mindful

Collect a sand dollar from dry sand

And not from silted shallows

While wet it’s very much alive

And will consign its sorrows

•••

Constant Objection

More often than not, a house fills up

with only stifled objections