The House I Live In
There in the house that smells of frying bacon
that settles into the wrinkles of your best dress
and pixelates the Lord’s Prayer with hydrogenation
where the donuts taste of cigarettes and
the Price is Right cackles from a set with knobs
caked, like smeared medjool dates, with time
where the kids cloaked in their mamas’ trust
pause for butterscotch disks
and to collect compliments on their bike tricks
There where the porch will give way in some years
where the paint will peel in jagged shards
threatening from grass grown high as if barbed wire safeguarding us
from the mismanagement of what becomes of life.
It is one to photograph while wearing mixed patterns and sometimes
in ballerina slippers and tutus; a juxtaposition for a lazy artist’s eye
or maybe just his need to eat, live, fail that starving part one more month.
Here you might ride past long enough to remember out loud
the waxy black wig capped by a doily
on the first Sunday of every month
for This One who cannot believe that this was your home
8-3 every weekday (but not Tuesdays) until you were 10
much like you never understood how his pants could gather
so specifically around his crotch like a 3 chambered heart.
