Poetry Despises Your Attempts at Domesticity

The vacuum’s one lung stiffens, aged,
it puffs too tightly.
                           It needs rest, Poetry says.
God bless her insistence: Ignore your aunts,
their plumage, their hospital corners, bleached
toilet bowls. The house aches. It has no gleaming
underside. It wants you to see it
for what it is, not for what it needs.
                           And what is it? You’ve forgotten.
A collection of smeared prints, the daily rigor
of staying, a blessing of dust.
And now you remember what the house was to you
as a child: a giant full-skirted woman, it gathered you in,
squatted like a nesting bird, loved you with its hovering vigilance.
And you loved it, heated duct work, squealing pipes,
because it could always stand, walk away, revealing you
and your family for what you are,
a knot, huddled, bare,
                           a circle of pale backs turned to the cold.


-- Julianna Baggott