Poem - MAG Poetry Prize 2010
The House
by
Atlanta, USA
Quifi Marshall strolls back
and forth, up and down the line
Of the street, by the
ticking of the courthouse clock
She makes rounds by the
dozens, finding the slightest adventure
In the rows of bushes and
broken, dead limbs that reach out to her
As she corners herself with
the great big shadow of regret,
Never wholly able to find
her own, or to be at peace like Leonard,
Her eyes racing straight
lines from doorway to doorway,
Her feet trampling and
dragging the edges of her smile backwards,
Like a leaf caught in the
blender.
Rose is a narcissistic
leader of earned fruits and flies, at once,
And her mothers are all dead
and gone by the time she gets back,
Trotting all that way for
only shallow warmth and
Hard, discernable leftovers,
strewn in crumbled pieces,
Scattered about the house
with the open door,
Where leaches huddle and
winter settles about like an old house is supposed to,
Worn at the bottom and heavy
for relief that never comes,
But for Rose’s imaginary
return to open arms and finding
Not Leonard at its door.
The little ones circle back
eventually, buzzards of destruction,
And everything of Diablo is
paced inside that house,
Where he forgets birthdays
and anniversaries of important events,
Days that matter to no one
entitled to such extravagancies as he,
Purist and lone sufferer of
nothing but bad movies and bleak sadness
That goes away each time he
wakes or is rolled over,
Never burdened by the pit of
himself,
Never revived like warm
animals at the thought of touch,
The essence of all which
keeps the house alive in his mind only.
Lovers of a certain feeling
travel far from the damned domicile,
As if running from its door,
returning to die in cold countries,
A napalmed death, where
breathing is privilege as keeping legs are,
Privy to loud and painful
asphyxiation always, its children,
Badgered by strangers and
prodded by fingers and blades,
Ringing around in the dark
mornings,
Blistering every appendage
ever desired or God-given,
God-forsaken worse than
Jewish cats in Tehran
during Passover,
When the boys are home and
the bombing is quiet.
Added: 30.04.2010
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