Mi casa es su casa  


Cheat the devil of plains and blizzards and you’ll sleep
a million years in a gray house a peach farmer built.
Once I did a dial-up to Hell to find out
who was calling--I walked down page after page with a pen
like the men who write-out mortgages between trips
to the shelter of newly built homes scattered like snow
in the great white suburbs. I live in a home the bank owns--

steam rises from the sink in the kichen, collects
on the walls of cabinets where it’s like sweat--
I’m swearing the house is alive. Even in winter
the windows crack with ice hanging at the corner
of each like a blue coronice from upstairs--
every nail and board the old farmer left behind laughs.