The Opposite House

This place:

                  a cavernous warehouse

                                                           of houses

dismantled,

                   catalogued,

                                       reordered here

according

                  to part-rendered-

                                                particle—

elemental—

                    the sentient

                                          stuff of space

stored in meta-

                         space: this

                                            room for doors,

thresholds,

                    staircases, risers

                                                  and stretchers,

banisters hand-

                           worn-smooth; this

                                                          for scrollwork,

moldings—egg

                         and tongue; for

                                                     floorboards—tongue

in groove; this

                          room for windows,

                                                          sills, sashes,

transoms; this

                         for mantles, shadow-

                                                            scents

of dead fires;

                      this a room

                                         of bins: hinges,

doorknobs,

                     latches, locks. All

                                                   of it aged,

orphaned—

                      artifacts of the

                                               slower fires

of neglect,

                  abandonment, before

                                                            bone-

pickers raced

                         the demolition for what

                                                               might be

salvaged to sell

                           again, like

                                              prizing gold

from the teeth

                         of the dead, to be

                                                       re-measured, leveled,

grafted as though

                              re-made into

                                                   the agelessness

of someone else’s

                               household-now.

                                                             As long

as they are

                    here, though, the fact

                                                          of every door

remains

               reference to

                                     an antecedent made

vague—a

                 cellar hole an

                                         empty socket

somewhere, or

                           a sandy lot

                                              opposite some

newer house,

                         a sidewalk’s

                                                stones’ arrival

into grass,

                     or daffodils blooming

                                                         like wild,

unmeant things

                            in what

                                         appears an old field

without design,

                            the kind

                                            sumac prefers

and will

              encircle—its

                                    own transfiguring

salvage,

               that—slow,

unambiguous.