Krystelle Bamford

Excerpt

The House at Westerly, Rhode Island

The house was the sea.
Or a ship on the sea.
Or a deer-blind
deep in the woods.
From the deck, they watch bitterns
skulk at the hem of vernal pools,
while green-heads
bomb through the dusk.
He is a wooden Indian
and she is a corn-husk doll.
He stormed the beaches
and she had a thousand sad children.
They split open lobsters,
shucking them like corn,
and toss the husks
into the pooling shadows.
Behind them the house,
all striped awnings and brass rails,
calls them to sleep, to fill with yellow varnish
and sawdust their ordinary silence.