Recycling

I hope to do something better this weekend than just recycle memories.



The "hubris" sentence doesn't make sense. This is just a first draft, off the cuff, in a hurry.



New Construction

Nine trees don’t make a wood,
just a builder’s folly. This house, while new,
is unsound: warped shingles, burst lines,
sinkholes, snare after snare. The hubris
in having something built for you
and having it be a disaster
reminds me of being seventeen
in a shabby Victorian conversion:
five apartments where one upstanding
Republican family once lived. Noises
in the night, inside my walls; I thought
I was dreaming of devils. One night, as I read,
a small black hand burst through the plaster.
It was a raccoon. The landlord
screwed a square of paneling over it.
I taped a Rockwell in the middle. Soon,
the death smell began, worsened, ended.
And I was still happier there
than on this train-set cul de sac
where the birds never come back.