CLAUDIA EMERSON

The Opposite House

This place:
                  a cavernous warehouse
                                                           of houses
dismantled,
                   catalogued,
                                       reordered here
according
                  to part-rendered-
                                                particle—
elemental—
                    the sentient
                                          stuff of space
stored in meta-
                         space: this
                                            room for doors,
thresholds,
                    staircases, risers
                                                  and stretchers,
banisters hand-
                           worn-smooth; this
                                                          for scrollwork,
moldings—egg
                         and tongue; for
                                                     floorboards—tongue
in groove; this
                          room for windows,
                                                          sills, sashes,
transoms; this
                         for mantles, shadow-
                                                            scents
of dead fires;
                      this a room
                                         of bins: hinges,
doorknobs,
                     latches, locks. All
                                                   of it aged,
orphaned—
                      artifacts of the
                                               slower fires
of neglect,
                  abandonment, before
                                                            bone-
pickers raced
                         the demolition for what
                                                               might be
salvaged to sell
                           again, like
                                              prizing gold
from the teeth
                         of the dead, to be
                                                       re-measured, leveled,
grafted as though
                              re-made into
                                                   the agelessness
of someone else’s
                               household-now.
                                                             As long
as they are
                    here, though, the fact
                                                          of every door
remains
               reference to
                                     an antecedent made
vague—a
                 cellar hole an
                                         empty socket
somewhere, or
                           a sandy lot
                                              opposite some
newer house,
                         a sidewalk’s
                                                stones’ arrival
into grass,
                     or daffodils blooming
                                                         like wild,
unmeant things
                            in what
                                         appears an old field
without design,
                            the kind
                                            sumac prefers
and will
              encircle—its
                                    own transfiguring
salvage,
               that—slow,
                                  unambiguous.