Dormitory
This place is very serious. A lock like that is symbol of seriousness, don’t you think? Grown up serious. 90210 serious. A lock is a promise. Some would say you were a lock, waiting to be entered, twisted irrevocably. Smell the smell of new, it cannot be reproduced. When gone, it is really gone. White throughout. Find the speck. You have done not a single thing to deserve this. Imagine if it were possible for anyone to deserve the things they get.
Country Setting
This neighborhood speaks for itself! The point of becoming disappears when inspected. What we offer here is a dream of a child pulling at the snagged strands of a thin, yellow carpet. A yard of gadgetry too far gone. The neighborhood says, look out. The neighborhood says, once, an old man burned up in a trailer trying to save his poodles from death. The church became infested with people at the funeral. The neighborhood opens its throat and out bobs Dixie from the horn of an oversized truck. A lot of history here! As you can imagine. Out here, once it happens it is always happening. The dirt hangs on to it until anyone who wants to can come back and dig it all back up.
Make an Offer
Welcome home. You’ve been here before and don’t remember. The evening you were born the KKK came. Your mother was a sparkling white gem in a sea of other white gems. Green lots- double fenced. The KKK parade was a practice parade. Your mother was mortified. She rested up against the Formica; floated gently atop a smooth sea of golden flakes. And her baby was being born, to a woman down the road. Another white gem, splitting open at the crystal seam to birth yet another white gem. You could have been so kind as to be clear. You were not clear.
Starter Home
Just like heaven. Only heaven can be what is otherly, what is not. Heaven is a row of mansions, probably. Here, things could be awful. Things could also be great! When you feel a certainty it buzzes in your throat, a ball of wasps angered by reason. This is the last of the certainty. An argument is a way of projecting your voice on to others. An argument is a way of insuring there is still some room on your lead. An argument is a way of breaking up when the top half is all child and the bottom half leaks and blooms, besides. Make this one your own with belongings. Make it your own by saying so.
21st Century Dungeon
This home is a system of boundaries! Walls galore. Imagine secrets as atoms piling up to make shapes. The shapes are people who have both good and bad attributes. The shapes are singing Shall We Gather At The River, beautifully. There is the one hallway that everyone walks through quickly after sunset. It is the feeling that the hallway will never end that makes everyone walk so quickly. What of the fears that do not materialize but instead remain always a possibility? A monster is a monster only when he greets you. A monster who never greets you is a terror. Some monsters have lived here. Is a dungeon not a dungeon if painted Pepto-Bismol pink? Would a monster pause in the doorway of such a room, briefly, before entering? Is the monster sad?
M. is an educator from Southern Illinois living across the river from Louisville, KY in Indiana. M.’s poems have recently been published in Prime Mincer, on Spork Pressand are forthcoming in Subtropics.