Impossible Houses, and: Have-to-dos
- Impossible Houses, and: Have-to-dos
Impossible Houses
On the day they say I stoppedor began I read from theBook of Exodus and knewevery word by sound alone
They told me I read aboutthe holy tabernaclethe priest’s vestments and breastplateonyx beryl amethyst
The ceiling of the ballroomat Rosecliff Permanent noonlapis opal chrysopraseI would have stayed there I would
have straggled myself behindto throw a midnight picnicunder the crystal and brassthe clouds and the deathless blue
Enough with these subsistencehouses Do you think childrenalways draw impossiblehouses I spent years trying
to reinvent the stairwayWouldn’t you rather climb likesailors, children To rock a-sleep in the crow’s nest I would [End Page 9]
Have-to-dos
Late a Sunday,soft blue eggspoach in clear broth.Passenger balloonsbob across the marketparking lot, lateon a late year Sunday,heartsick and the lightcoming too much in.Our language asksI choose betweenheartsick or delighted.Once I spoke a languagewith a single wordthat meant have-to-dos,light obligations.The horses and henshave been movedinside again to sleep,heat escapingthe seams of grey barns.Late the year, neitherhome nor far, near enoughto see you waitingin the foggy kitchenwhere we both are needed. [End Page 10]
Jen Jabaily-Blackburn lives in Northampton, MA. Her work has most recently appeared in Cimarron Review, The Common, and is forthcoming in Indiana Review. Her poem “For Gene Kelly” appears in the 2014 edition of Best New Poets, edited by Dorianne Laux.
