Since I know by heart the floor plan
of every house I grew up in,
I follow in my own footsteps
& enter the living room now of house
number two, where I re-shot with cap guns
our first Tv’s Saturday-morning version
of Custer’s last stand to my satisfaction,
& my father zoomed in on the small screen
to size up big-talking Joe McCarthy.
When, in the dining L, my mother lunched
with girlfriends winter afternoons, I played
alone under the table, in the five
o’clock shadow of all those legs. The hall
between the bedrooms framed my silhouette
snipped out at Dayton’s in a flash, eyelashes
intact. Just as I made the rounds of past
houses, memorizing their ins & outs
like someone going blind, I move, as though
by plan, from room to room on this blueprint,
still a black figure on a light background,
& measure off my future home.
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