Robert Lietz: "Open House"

Open House

Robert Lietz

They come on foot to make my afternoon,
the children by threes, in wagons

their mothers tug, to homes their old men
might buy cheap enough.

I pour the salsa on. I watch them crowd the truck
for lunch the company provides,

and see the wind-sped ash, the scraps
of wrappers

like spun-dials rising up from game-boards,
settling again on clumps

and into buttoned
cellar-holes.

Another March to raise my doubt, remembering
houses the village burned

to keep the older kids outdoors,
the unlovely far,

tucked out of sight in shelters. I see,
in the equation's fluttering,

a foot-bridge swaying between terms,
and, in the season's

brisky threats, this people pleased
to sell its gypsies out,

for all the World makes of them,
content to sip

their dark roast's bittersweet,
to find the old ropes

more or less
correct.

And in this other March, beheld
in drivers' eyes,

in the kids' eyes, up for grabs,
they keep their larders stocked,

their walled homes guaranteed, a people
composed behind

inch-thick filets and chops, behind
their smiling pig's head

and cuts for the stir-fry, a people
settling

to the talk they do around a supper,
over the sweet

pork-lips and brains/wines
pleasing to the twilight

and to evening
guests.

© CrossConnect Incorporated 1996, 1997
Published in association with the University of Pennsylvania Writers House
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