Our cars were old. My mother did not shave
her armpits. My father wore Birkenstocks.
Our house was built in 1885. We rented.
My parents were not married. My father
was not really my father. My brother’s room
was really a closet. Our front door was
painted shut. The sadness in the house
was compounded by its age. So many
others had tried here. The sadness hung
from the leaves of the walnut tree and
from the bleached orange curtain in the high
window above the foyer where we kept our coats.
The sadness hung over the house and dripped.
The nut factory on our street shifted and clanked.
The forklifts droned. Inside the house
the floor was tired. The house’s shoulder
was buried in the earth. Office chairs
on one side of the living room rolled downhill.
We needed the house to be our house. We paid
$180 a month. We lived on food stamps. Our trees
were hybrids. Orange-lemon and double walnut.
When the first summer heat sent us
into the house’s dark cave, my father tried
to splinter the walls. Dummy, he screamed.
You dummy. We would have him dead.
Dummy. We would usurp him. Dummy.
We would replace him. Outside
walnuts cracked on the sidewalk.
Pale sour oranges split their leprous
rinds. A lilac bush broke out in fluffy
tufts like body hair. All day long
magenta four o’ clocks gaped at the sky.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 25, Issue 1.
Oceana Callum mothers, teaches English Composition, and occasionally surfs in Orange County, California. She received an M.F.A. in poetry from California State University, Long Beach in 2005.
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