What's Left
by Jarred Thompson
Edited by Hal Y. Zhang
Copyedited by Chelle Parker
June 2022
There’s a house on my street
where grass weasels through brick
and dandelions sprout little worlds
beside beer bottles filled with scat.
Birds stash nests with plastic in a rusted bathtub
and stray cats tryst their tails,
short-circuiting the night under a pregnant moon.
This house festers. Few walk past that don’t stare, asking,
“Can wreckage ever be a good neighbor?”
Ruins like this can emerge anywhere.
Spaces once filled with worldwide signals,
piped in through the walls, surfing alongside running-hot water.
They are once-lived-in wounds that speak
with what can only fit between palms.
Crumpled. Smelt.
The house on my street was stripped and vacated in a hurry.
The owners took what they could carry.
They knew the science of rodents: everything eyed for mulch.
They left a gash so large it felt like a door to a world
tour-guided by one-eyed teddy bears with discarded cell phones
that turned ether into black noise.
The owners couldn’t help but leave skins behind unattended.
Passive bakers of dust.
Sometimes, I walk down to the house
and wonder what it might take to love
a place like this. A house hunched,
the past on its back, its future in soil.
Sometimes, a spider dangles from a rotting beam,
its own chandelier, and I think, Yes,
you too can siphon a statement, though I won’t understand.
You too, stranger, are ambient.
© 2022 Jarred Thompson
About the author
