The New House
by Ernestine Lahey


Excited as copper kettles,
moving in there;
pigeons in barn eaves.
Everyone disapproved,
said tut tut that’s what they do these days.

Our room was bare as an empty milk jug that first night
and someone had rubbed out the streetlight
with a black crayon.

I liked sitting with you in that room
past the fake peonies in the window box
under the net curtains nettier with holes
on the too-slippery sofa made of authentic nylon.

But the biggest spiders I ever saw lived there
and mostly I remember them,
scuttling under radiators,
while you went for a glass.






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