Neighborhood

Write about your street or neighborhood. It could be from your past or your present.


Mortal
(33 Chestnut Street, Binghamton, NY)

The house slides on itself, slow, and curls
like a newborn's hair. During sleep or sex, it
creaks out strange wooden complaints.

About a long unrequited life, it sighs, of plywood, siding, century glass
shaped from a city's demise. It taps its foot
impatiently in parlor rooms built for embalming.

It wears the cold. It breathes nonsense about empty pockets.
Though a furnace tries to laugh, the house chokes on its own
inside joke. This house is made of old.

It chatters of For Sale signs. Doilies. Splinters. Of scerrosis. Of clocks.
Whispers. rot. Plaster. Rat holes. regret. Of midnight
knocks. And bread. Of rising heating costs.

What does it say now, in prayer?
or shout? or mumble through sleep? What words used for bullet bursts,
and siren calls and 98 blood shots over the Susquehanna.

What does the house say to this? Hailstorm?
Punched out dreams, 13? Hangman?
Armor around a heart?

Still made of old, it says nothing.

Jane
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