Midwestern Gothic

Through cutouts of lakeside cottages,
un-insulated, gingerbread trimmed.

Through long-shadowed halls over
pine-boards creaking, cracked attic stairs,
I will gather you back.
                             Tear off the sheets.

I am taking the terrible, blistered mirror,
casting over empty gas lamps
and their globes.

The dollhouse has only three walls but the lake
is small enough to drown a child.

Tell me the worst winter.

Burnt-wet boards adrift. Blue marbles spilling
across the long porch, a clatter of cat eyes
in glass.

                                 ***

The rain made us admit our sadness
as if it weren’t already worn like a headlamp.

You need something
               to say over dinner.
                                             I keep saying rain
when I mean has the nest been abandoned?

Have your legs longed to swim
in the icy pool?
                                I keep saying
when all I mean is rain
and the rain and yes rain and more rain.

We were starving and every rock
was shaped like a heart.

                                 ***

The lilac branch cracked in the storm so my mother
tied it back with old nylons. The basement
flooded so she sat on the stoop
with a spoon. This duct tape
keeps the radio working, but you can’t
change the station, the decades we spent
at that frequency. In the middle of the night
she rose to make bread, punching it down
in a veil of light yeast rising sleepily
over the stove. She crocheted
a blanket but it grew too long and she never
turned the row, so really, it was a rope.
Ariadne wracked her brain for some maze
to crack, saying take this, take this
to find your way back.