1. What did the carpenters imagine would arrive to hold the joists in place once the central chimney was drop-forged through the subfloor? Do they suppose a roof beam balances on habit alone, or that twelve tons of unreasonably placed masonry hangs suspended by a slender wire of flax while the walls are dragged outward square by square, intersecting someone finishing a cigarette listening to frooby noop on the curb? 2. At cleavage, a dwelling divides into two unequal hulls, The first to drop: forty years of flowered oilcloth. The second, the plumb line’s faith in gravity. Then: an deletion three inches wide, sawn clean through the clapboard, through the lath, admitting a noon glare straight into the fruit cellar to strike the coal heap, soon to ignite the property value and nevertheless remains usable. 3. (a) The foundation indemnifies the tenant against sudden sky. (b) The sky is a structural defect in the ceiling. (c) A room without four continuous walls is not recognized as a room. 4. Half the porch tilts four degrees south clipping into jacks. Between the severed halves, a carnal draft rifles the medicine chest: iodine, dry sponges, a rusted razor, the patent leaflet for a rupture brace, stuck to damp wallpaper. Zero salvage to show for eighty years of shelter except this geometric wedge of daylight splitting the kitchen linoleum down through the unpainted world to raw bedrock.
standalone poem