House

Frontiers, 2004

I reached through the bars

to my homeland but all

I touched were your

clothes hanging on the lines,

the words of my new language.

In this house was the housewife's

poetry. In the chores,

the endless tasks to maintain

order within, to maintain

order without.

But the house never spoke to me.

It kept its music to itself.

It was a house of crosscurrents.

If the windows opened, each

door slammed, and anything with words

written on it would fly

into the air, into another space.