The Eviction

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Aaron Poochigian

The Eviction

 

      I gave the knob a good loud rattle
      to tell whatever critters
      were in there, please, to run and hide.
      With that, I threw the front door wide.
      We heard no skitters.

      But, wow, what guilt: the family chattel
      wore the dust
      Neglect deposits, as it must,
      on all that goes neglected.
      Interconnected,
      innocence-entangling
      vertigos of webwork ran
      from escritoire to ottoman.
      Caught moths were dangling,
      mummified, like ornaments.

      Agony to have to reclaim
      by rag and broom
      the fancy living room
      I had consigned to decadence
      for decades. All the same,
      the time had come to teach the spiders
      this wasn’t their inheritance
      to build on as they pleased.
      We were the new insiders,
      and we had come to stay.

      You laughed. I sneezed—
      a sign, perhaps, that we should start
      ripping the intricate
      disgrace apart
      and whisking it
      in tatters out of doors.

      Respectful in a way,
      we labored silently to sate,
      if it was not too late,
      the nagging of my ancestors.