BURNING HOUSE PRESS

Portal

Strange goings on today televisions walk in and out the door pills spew from the cat’s mouth
here take your medicine fox at the door yip yips pit bull chews a piece of Wonder Bread the skull
of a boar on the table the boy reaches through a hole in his bathroom floor the door is open the
window is open the toilet gapes the medicine cabinet is open the shower curtain is open foxes in
the basement yip yip yip a terrible sound worse than coyotes worse than the school bus tipped on
its side she rests on the floor listening a chirp a whistle pills everywhere perhaps she murdered
her husband buried him beneath the floor under the patch of carpet the darker patch the new
patch the patch she fingers with tenderness steam rolls under the house light beams shoot
everywhere from the eyes of a stuffed pheasant her palms the school bus tipped on its side
nothing comes from the sky a pregnant fifteen year old stands in a child’s wading pool stroking
her great belly her younger brother lolls on the grass there is joy in the garbage dump the stuffed
fox on alert tail quivering there are strange goings on tonight light and steam pours from the
holes in the floor the school bus tipped on its side the ravaged garden I can fix this I can fix this I
am dead but in my corporeal body invisible to everyone except my son even dead I worry about
my inability to keep a clean house I took off one of my diamond earrings pressed it into his hand
and while I am neither upset nor surprised to be dead I still cry

Rebecca Loudon is the author of three collections of poetry, Tarantella, Radish King, and Cadaver Dogs, and two chapbooks, Navigate, Amelia Earhart’s Letters Home, and TRISM. She lives on an island on the Salish Sea, where she works as a professional musician, and teaches violin lessons to children. Find her on Twitter @rloudon.

featured image by Lisa Toboz