Once, the kitchen was big enough for only one
table. Swollen hearts of the banana swung
their weight over the window; and in November,
first frost left prints or curled upon the breath,
then faded into white-tinted sky. Do you remember
the year they put the black pig in the untiled
downstairs bathroom? How it grunted through
the night, surely knowing its fate next day
beneath the avocado trees. The ones who come
to have a look, have only one requirement
in mind: turn-key. The wood is rich
and dark but the rooms old-fashioned, the windows
framed in splinters. Here are the beautiful lathe-
turned balusters leading up into unfinished space,
the light softened there by rough-hitched rafters,
leaking through in places with the rain. Every post
set into the foundation rests beside buried coin,
singed feather, spatter of blood. Nothing new smells
like woven cane, inlaid shell— history the taste
of an iron grille, the inside of a padlocked chest.
—Luisa A. Igloria
10 28 2011
In response to an entry from The Morning Porch.