The house eaters.

The house eaters.

1.
My grapefruit tanned
toothpicks,
that I call legs,
bow above
the five-day flattened
spot
in his olive shag carpet
tracing grandpa Leo's
blueprint,
with one encapsulated
toe-
this is the femur, this is
the head,
this is the fist, the ring
finger, the soul.

My eyes search
in macabre circles
for any sudden movement
from the white quivering
slivers of
Cousin Caroline's
purported fly fetuses.

2.
In the dining room,
huddling behind the
corpse
of an old hospital bed,
a framed photo
smoke browned and
wearing my toddler face,
watches blankly as
his children choke
hushed, broken
sentences

this will be yours, my
plate, seperate the
holiday china...

3.
I am left
the ceramic cygnet,
and an ivory carved
dromedary.

These artifacts
plucked
from his porcelain
menagerie
that I decipher
through dust fingerprints
for
one small inheritance
of a memory.

4.
Tomorrow,
Aunt Rose
puts price
to his bibelots,
the olive shag carpet,
even
cousin Amy's
plastic horse,
who was accidentally
left to pasture on an
afghan.

A silver guilded glass cage
image of her past,

she says she will whittle
all of him,
from the
wooden
house
bones.