The last home
I shared with my mother
and siblings
in Ventnor City was a sandstone
bungalow near the lagoon
beside the sewer plant
that inhaled the stench of summer,
dice, sweat, and booze.
I remember
phlegm in wine
glasses on our kitchen
counter, church bells
from St. Johns
on the corner,
and the foreclosure
sign on the front
door, marigold
on a wooden mouth
taped shut.
I had left long before,
escaping to a marriage
that was nowhere near
this place, and now I feel
some kind of way
I will always feel
coming back to this
home in memory
the way my family returned
themselves to salvage
what they could
when they could.
Nothing and
everything remained.
Mushrooms sprouted
from moist carpet.
Food in the fridge
was lined with mold.
Mice scrabbled
in drop ceilings.
Salt from the ocean
creeped and peeled
paint from plastered walls.
Somehow, they stayed.
There was nothing for me there,
and when I peeked
in the windows the night
before the boards went up,
everyone’s ghost,
cushioned the backs
of wooden chairs.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 24, Issue 2.
Shawn R. Jones is the co-owner of Tailored Tutoring LLC and Kumbaya Academy, Inc. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Womb Rain and A Hole to Breathe. Her work has appeared in Tri-Quarterly, New Ohio Review, River Heron Review, and elsewhere. Her poetry collection, Date of Birth, has won the 2022 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize in Poetry and is forthcoming from Persea Books, 2023. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and holds an MFA from Rutgers-Camden.
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