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Where are you when you exit and enter through your strange invisibility like a ghost on the couch beside you the shadow of another house another time goes in search of a change of walls without scare tactics like do not listen at the keyholes never open this third door hypnotized by the mystery of a distant whirring of wheels repeating clinks of glass was that a hum like the falling hush of hair behind a heavy door wandering you reconsider the option to disobey the thrill of the unforeseen consequences till you're lost in the circular stairwells in every corner overlap up with down and east with west somehow an emptiness at the center where there should be shouldn't there be an inner chamber or at least a great hall you're afraid or are you hoping you might fall over the threshold thorns on ancient roses below a sky reminiscent of suspension bridges between recurrent dreams of endless corridors and turns over and over you slip between shifting surfaces sure you've been here before but where you thought you knew the place of every armoire and chair every bedpost bare spaces long scratches mar the parquet or unexpected edges scrape your shins again and again you could swear you hear the click of latches catching no one answers when you call out no voice calls from you curl your hand over the knob believe you feel held gripping of someone else's on the other side |
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You don't know Jack built this house around your volatile pain refers to yourself in the third person periodically flares up without a functional fire extinguisher there is no pronoun for the house is conscious of being your illusion an illness that doesn't let you feel settled despite how you choose to believe you can be in the house every time you burn it down in your arsenic rages hot then cool down gather up from the toxic ashes the nails you need to raise the next house around the same unstable mood disorder demanding where in hell is the hammer where is the skill saw in two every inch that you are separate from the house is your false construct for not one single second person plural defines a relationship or a name for what you keep doing to you everything else is a home improvement dream project deferred eternally unfinishing parts you never can notice what you neglect to trim out the basement smoldering again off limits the spontaneous combustion rags the rusting boiler inflated pipes and tires spinning by the explosive fuses spark your flinty temper is not a viable address your indoor life in your indoor voice will you file the insurance claims you null and void by reason of insanity your face in the mug shots inflamed |
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ALICE B. FOGEL's third book, Be That Empty, was a national poetry bestseller, and she is also the author of Strange Terrain, a "how-to" book on learning to appreciate poetry without necessarily "getting" it. Nominated for "Best of the Web" as well as 6 times for the Pushcart, her poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Best American Poetry, Robert Hass's Poet's Choice, Spillway, Hotel Amerika, Crazyhorse, and Pleiades, and she has received a fellowship from the NEA and other awards. Another collection, Interval: Poems Based Upon Bach's Goldberg Variations, won the Nicholas Schaffner Award for Music in Literature and is forthcoming in March 2015. She is currently the NH State Poet Laureate. |
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a l i c e b l u e t w e n t y - f o u r I S S N 1 5 5 9 - 6 5 6 7 |