3. Haunted House

This house purls in the air like it was stitched against space —
it was there when I first stepped outside. Therefore, it is as good
as forever; has been longer for many.

Busy clocks count the hours of the mouthless light that creeps
across its floor like a crack. Closets stuffed with stolen
clothes and bones and long court transcriptions.

Look at its ceiling: the basement absorbs all the muddy red
water like a stone lung passing air through
the joists and beams.

A hallway at the bottom of the stairs winds for miles beneath
the telephone poles that smash through its walls. It’s lined
with official seals and framed agreements, stacked

with dirty blankets, tar, and feathers, a length of
coarse rope. A chandelier swings from its end, blown
by a draft from an open door in the attic.

Through it comes the sound of laughter, the smell
of alcohol, and a haze of tobacco smoke.
Someone’s in there: men with maps, squares, and ink.

A representative inventory of the larder follows: numerous
acres of land; head dresses; slaves; volumes of
bark, wood, and air; borax; pesticides; prisoners; hamburger.

The furnaces burn when they have been fed enough
horse fat and wine barrels sit unopened in cellars stocked with
coffee, tea, and sugar kept in decorative jars and burlap sacks.

It has a door on most every street, in every basement or shopping mall.
There is no discrimination of palace or convenience mart.
Its broad lawns and gardens seep outward, beautifully.

On the right evenings, often with the help of others, candles
can be seen in its broken cupola, where teardrop flames cast
the shadows of forks and empty chairs on the trees outside.

I often have a fear of being too obvious in my poetry. I think this comes from my appreciation for so-called difficult poets. On the one hand, abstraction can refine ideas, open poetry to multiple perspectives, and push it out of a narrative mode, where it can be an art form of its own design. On the other hand, academic poetry is rarely read, frequently misunderstood, and for various reasons, whether the perception is accurate or not, formidable in its scope and ambitions.

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