CLAUDIA EMERSON

The Opposite House

This place:
                  a cavernous warehouse
                                                           of houses
dismantled,
                   catalogued,
                                       reordered here
according
                  to part-rendered-
                                                particle—
elemental—
                    the sentient
                                          stuff of space
stored in meta-
                         space: this
                                            room for doors,
thresholds,
                    staircases, risers
                                                  and stretchers,
banisters hand-
                           worn-smooth; this
                                                          for scrollwork,
moldings—egg
                         and tongue; for
                                                     floorboards—tongue
in groove; this
                          room for windows,
                                                          sills, sashes,
transoms; this
                         for mantles, shadow-
                                                            scents
of dead fires;
                      this a room
                                         of bins: hinges,
doorknobs,
                     latches, locks. All
                                                   of it aged,
orphaned—
                      artifacts of the
                                               slower fires
of neglect,
                  abandonment, before
                                                            bone-
pickers raced
                         the demolition for what
                                                               might be
salvaged to sell
                           again, like
                                              prizing gold
from the teeth
                         of the dead, to be
                                                       re-measured, leveled,
grafted as though
                              re-made into
                                                   the agelessness
of someone else’s
                               household-now.
                                                             As long
as they are
                    here, though, the fact
                                                          of every door
remains
               reference to
                                     an antecedent made
vague—a
                 cellar hole an
                                         empty socket
somewhere, or
                           a sandy lot
                                              opposite some
newer house,
                         a sidewalk’s
                                                stones’ arrival
into grass,
                     or daffodils blooming
                                                         like wild,
unmeant things
                            in what
                                         appears an old field
without design,
                            the kind
                                            sumac prefers
and will
              encircle—its
                                    own transfiguring
salvage,
               that—slow,
                                  unambiguous.  end