Greetings to the red-eyed clouds
from this, the house that sits
on the mound and faces the corner
that marriage built, where wine
was drunk and semen flooded
the egg which lodged in the uterus
that built the daughter who greeted
the man and the woman here
in the mound at the corner in the house
that education built, and you
know from home-schooling
that the woman can be the teacher
and the man can be the tender child
and ditto the actual infant, depending
on her sex, dependent on love and
income; oh our dear dependent
is ruining the new chair in the house
that nested ambition built, along
with naked sense, and the beak
of god, the job of love, the hurt
of older homes, the hang
of it generally, the hands of pain,
the haze of Zoloft and the pudge
of Prozac, the twins of failed
marriages that manage to live on
in the ardor of our redone arbor
here in the house that books built,
that Yiddish and the Book of Common
Prayer built, that Presbyterian pride
built, that pogroms built, that blue
and white collars built, that Bildungs-
romans built, that the Biltmores built,
that mad dogs bayed at, that the baby
was born in that the cat bit and mouse
whispered within, over which, mortgaged,
the thunder caught its tongue and brought
great downpours upon while the coffee boiled,
while the paper, delivered late again, said:
We fight the terrorists abroad
so we don't have to fight them at home.
