Her House

Rosemary Sullivan
From:   Blue Panic. Black Moss Press, 1991, p 52

It is her last gamble,
this house where she waits all day
for endings. She never moves,
a small grey rock barnacled
for eighty years with lives.
She is idea now. Her will
surveys the scattered bones
of her intent.
No one enters.

Behind, her house stretches
its secret body.
It is filled with left over women,
emptied with children.
All day flowers drop from their fingers.
They sell them in the market.
The meals repeat themselves
like hunger.

From her counter she watches
bodies pass into shadow.
The street dead-ends at the prison
where her son was tortured.
She never turns her mind
in that direction.
The world is this door
narrowed to a tolerable slice.

Poem 1 | Poem 2 | Poem 3 | Poem 4 | Poem 5 | Poem 6 | Poem 7 | Poem 8 | Poem 9 | Poem 10 | Poem 11 | Poem 12 | Poem 13 | Poem 14

Rosemary Sullivan's works copyright © to the author.