Swamphouse, and Sitting It

by ALYSSA TOWNS

Let us show you our garden.
Chanterelles bloom out of the mud
after it rains. The house floods.
We’re growing Rhizopus on rye
and we feed it to the chickens.
They give us compost. Four hens,
and one will only lay when she
likes the book we’re reading her.

Sunblock stained his Lacoste.
Nondilute bleach dissolved it,
the shirt, and stung mosquito bites.
We’ve honeybees in the walls,
I think. I look for comb and find
plaster, mouse halfway in a snake.
The cat likes the master bathroom.
Like most, we’re here to leave.

I vacuum, I learn to spell vacuum,
I replace books I’ve moved. He
returns and eats the pear I left.