Full House

Herb keeps an old face in every room of the house:

There’s an immigrant’s gate that lines the lot

And a garden planted by a woman in 1901.

The yard is small and rectangular.

Vines grow up the lattices.

The kitchen tells him to remember stories.

The living room teaches him how to tell them.

The porch is gray and even

With dust.

And even a neighbor joked that even

The wind stopped calling
Those green-framed screens

That oscillate between life and death.

Guilt stays in the bathroom below the stairs

And abstraction
Sits in a shuttered bedroom

With a face that’s dark as night.

And when the upstairs hallway floods with light

It’s for youth and distraction.

But the foyer he left just for her

Because it reminded him of birth and salvation.

He never goes there anymore—

A neighbor moved an armoire in the hallway

To shut it off.

But on Tuesday nights, when Herb sheds his gown
And shuffles out and into town

Down to Molly's Pub to down a few downers down by the water,
The whole house is turned around

And the pictures turn their faces
And blink
As the door turns into a shutter.

So they wait for him—holding
Smiles—until he comes home drunk,
Opens the door, and lays face-down
Before them on the floor.

He was just playing playing cards, he tells them.
Same old lies.
But they smile back now—every single face.