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  • Finished House, and: Chosen
  • Ray Gonzalez (bio)

Finished House

When I walk home, the house is heavy with fruit, the trees lighted with blossoms. When I walk home, the pictures are framed on the walls, the key in the door. This is the house of mistakes and clothes, a burning kitchen, a foundation for cemented feet and secret stories, a place that survives the trees. I see my pet pigeon at age seven, the lightning strike in the backyard, a sweating, pregnant belly, recall my brother who goes unnamed, the guitar leaning at the foot of the stairs, friction between the mountain and sky, how I carved my initials on the rocks in the backyard garden.

Now, the earth opens and sparrows fall through. The earth opens and my pet pigeon falls in. [End Page 101] When the earth closes, the town changes its name and the river flows, though the house is still there. The earth closes and I put my clothes on. The earth shuts and I wear suspenders for the first time. My shoes are worn and I learn, though my arms are sore and I grow. My hamburger is done and I eat. When I enter my room, the transistor radio comes on. When I enter my room, the bed is unmade and I leave.

Walking away is good and I know why I come back and the cottonwood never falls, why the magician makes the bridge collapse as I tie my shoes. This is the reason for staying awake, a clue to the boarded windows, the lesson that leaves a sliver of paradise, but invites me to comb my hair. This is how I shave each day, collect post cards that don’t lie, love what I have. This is the way the rattlesnake strikes, misses me, and I hear something else, mistake the night for a stain trailing the cut belly of a rejected god. I have cousins I never see. They don’t visit the finished house and I am sad, my high school buddies killed in Vietnam long ago. My destiny is history and I run, the dark fields actually leaves and branches, though my writing hands are brown. I am visited by a walking cane, [End Page 102] as if I know how to go, why I am rejected by a tribe with three painted figures on their jars.

Again, the earth opens, the ventriloquist climbs up and I tell myself not to listen. The earth opens with the moon and sun misspelled. The earth opens and the worm falls into the drinking glass. The earth closes when my hands move. The earth closes, eats the Mexican border, and the desert becomes snow. The earth closes and I lose my rosary, though I am taught well. When I walk home, I am afraid. When I walk home, a man has water drip onto his forehead, his front yard landscaped and complete. When I walk home, mailboxes explode and the neighbors finally agree it is my finished house. When I walk home, a fresh pair of socks waits for me, though my favorite pen has dried out. When I walk home, my love asks me a question and I water the garden for good luck. When I enter my home, sparrows fly up and I count them. [End Page 103]

Chosen

It was an emblem of a creature, fiery and strong, tattooed on the forehead of a boy I knew in the years of the broken neighborhood,

the youth falling in the street during the rain, whispering it was my turn, someday, though my head glistened in the sun as well,

summer days of Kool-Aid and dark, hidden rooms steaming into a sidewalk where the branded boy waited to guess my name.

It was the 110-degree heat, waves melting the kid into a symbol on the side of a house I never entered, his mother dead long ago,

his father a stain on the tree outside the door, the furnace of the street keeping me back as the creature sweated on the boy’s face

and I saw what he meant when he stole my toys, promising he would give...

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