Poetry
Today We're Going to Conjure a House
Which is real- This bottle of indigo glass in the grass,
Or the bench with the pot of geraniums, the stained
Mattress and the washed overalls drying in the sun?
—Wallace Stevens
Get out your rank incense, your mock complaints
and your on-the-spot training. Close your eyes and match
your inhales to your exhales. Forget everything you know
about screen doors, oil fires, and fragile attic windows,
we will have none of these in our house.
Royal Baking Powder works best for your foundations,
boil a pot of coarse-ground rust and
tell us what happened in the den when you were nine.
Check for ground radioactivity and rake the grass
with a fork while smoking, do this with vigor.
After you’ve finished breathe in the lawn with your bare feet:
when in excess, dandelion greens are a vital food source.
Employ the idea of moon frosting, when necessary.
Has it come up for you yet?
Erase your palette, then reconfigure.
Contributor
Boni JoiBoni Joi received an M.F.A. in poetry from Columbia University. She has been published in Arabella, Long Shot, Driver's Side Air Bag, NJ Bowel & Bladder Control, and Big Hammer. She has a chapbook with Iniquity Press/Vendetta Books and is one of four poets in a book by Ocular Press. She is author of The Jaw-Harp Aphorisms and has self-published the Matchbook poems, a series of succinct poems printed on matchbooks. She lives in Brooklyn.
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