The Sunken House, The Rough Floor
-for John Ryan McGreevy
When the National Palace’s second floor crumbled,
when the telephone poles and apartment walls splintered—
before the thunderous drone of cracked concrete and collapse
gave way to the long sting of cries—my friend sipped
from a water glass, his head dizzy as if the house
and floor were shaking beneath him, as dust and fire
and rubble blanketed the slums and market. Just a week prior,
he came to the island village to help work-thinned mothers
tramping through dwindling forests to cook meals
for their families, to help the island forests from men and women
leveling branches and trunks to ash and smoke. Seventy
miles south and on the coast, Port-au-Prince sidewalks
fill with lifeless figures, naked and blank; families huddle
under makeshift tents of tarpaulin and bed sheets. He tightens
the mask over his face, but the smell of bodies still attack his nose.
The toppled buildings and fields are a nameless graveyard.
What can he do about the house a man has saved his whole life
for falling into itself or his wedding that will have to wait more years—
homes emptied and ruined like the farmlands and jungles
over-worked and picked worthless? Is this the look of every city?
Will the world see its sister? In a country reduced to street-median
campgrounds and signs begging for water and medicine,
signs for aid and answers for missing children, my friend sleeps
among hundreds in a soccer field weary of another aftershock,
weary of the night fires and horror that can’t be put out.
Self-Portrait with a Mouse in my future Mother-In-Law’s Kitchen
The house is night draped. The kitchen is soiled
with the dishwasher’s dull hum, the dripping faucet’s slow peck.
I spy the thin, milky wax of bacon grease pooling in a saucepan,
as I stir from the borrowed guest room, pass through the den
and dining room, padding the long way around the master suite
to take a leak. I’ve grown accustomed
to the next morning compliments on my heavy snore,
my fiancé’s crammed and overflowing closet, our stalled love-life nights.
Crouching in the loaned quarter’s only hidden corner to change.
Knocks and drawer thuds, talking and dog barks waking me.
Tonight, in the night light’s dim glow, soft stepping
to keep quiet each shabby floorboard, I am looking forward to
cold tile, a vacant bathroom—all mine. Nearing the door
across from the storage pantry, I catch a glimpse of it.
I startle as if walking in on someone dressing.
An egg of fur. A clump of my beard trimmings.
Skittering blur prowling the counter sill, poised along the garbage bin rim.
Did I wake your tiny paws from scouring dirty bowls
for the dried slather of soup broth and Ramen noodles,
a morsel of grimy melon rind? Forgive me, I don’t mean to.