Talvikki Ansel

HOUSE

House of chestnut, pine, swirly glass;
house of acorns embedded in beams,
acorns at the foot of the bed, acorns in
between sheets. House I hope no one shoots 
the windows of, a clear hole sweet as sin
in the glass above the sink like a peep hole
into a decorated egg, diorama of a dwelling.
Looking out, eye to cold glass: green
patina of bridge rails, pines’ dark wall,
crows worry frozen apples from trees.
If you peer in: my mother’s china, father’s barometer.
House footings on sedimentary rock.
Ferns in summer, ice in winter; tide-swirled
gray matter on the cellar landing.
House of empty gas tanks in the yard, house
like a sieve, traffic’s honks and purrs,
ice rattle, apple limbs’ creaking.
Cluster flies in window cracks. Stoves
heat the air around themselves, upstairs, downstairs
in my lady’s chamber, where she dwells with spider sacs.
Newspapers, kindling, blue flame
of the propane. Small, forest-green canisters
like a congregation of aliens lined up in the hall.
House that provides much mirth at the bank
though they hide it well, house of my dowry.
Bank woman in faux Chanel who sees
my criminal nature—don’t come here.
A garter snake with enamel-blue eyes
haunts the woodpile, eyes like a porcelain bowl
from an uncle’s erratic voyages.
Squirrels in walls, mice ghost the baseboard
toilet to sofa, leave mousey maroon stains
on the title above the deed to the well.
Wind thumps a loose window pane.
Dusty horseshoe crabs, clamshell ashtrays—
things disappear: I blame the mice, who slipped
a wooden camel into the folds of the sofa.
Swallows fly into the open door.
An Arts & Letters volume
with a Frank O’Hara poem someone bought to read
sixty years ago. Dorothy Wordsworth’s diaries.
Hallucinatory, she enters the scene
like an irate hornet, pings
against the window glass, I trap her
under a pot, say: what’s your deal? remain
your writing self, do not devolve to housework,
cooking and toothache, observe stone-crop growing
on cliffs, go break rock.
House of light-reflected ripples on ceilings.
A phoebe tucked into an old swallows’ nest.
Trees trimmed away now, a cat’s
new configuration of branches to climb.
Breezes move in and out windows,
breathe into the space between lathes,
ruffle moonlight in the cove. Stranger—
quit looking, something’s flown out of the stove.

TALVIKKI ANSEL is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently Somewhere in Space (The Ohio State University Press / The Journal Award in Poetry).