Adam Dahlstrom, This Is the House that Clementine Built, 2019 (Artist Website)
Mixed Media Collage, 15 x 18”
that shall twist my love’s childhood home
spreading a phalanx of unboxed secrets
throughout a radius of too much
hitting the fan to the square to the
centrifugal spiral of an amoral devil
The average American household hoards
300,000 objects
“from paper clips to ironing boards”
states Regina Lark whom I can’t help skymorphing
into a majestic bird who owns nothing
but the horizons of a wingspan
This is the Midwest so double that
go ahead triple it
basement barn storage-locker
rustlocked since last century
with 17 decaying chairs
as far as I counted thru barred skylines
We waited 1 year there for new border rules
I carved 2 rooms upstairs via the weekly removal of
1 carful (recyclables) + 1 carful (donations)
besides the irregular accounting of
100 heavyduty trash bags (barn accoutrements)
2 mummified possums (I buried under rain)
With colorful pyres of moldy barnwood
we barbecued 4 seasons of s’mores thus clearing
the wellhouse as well as the barn groundfloor
but when we left across the border
there remained the collapsing 2nd story
the storage attic basement O! the house itself
Climate change increases the chances of twisters
For the 1st time in 20 years
my love’s parents hide in their basement
waiting for the tornado to do what we can’t
—to suddenly rewrite all borderrules
& I love them so
even the tornado bellowing lo
I’m lilting tilting detessellating John Doe
the Baptist grasshopping mouthfuls of trash to
announce a prehistoric messiah Who
shall swirl us all into a tantric tetris of detritus
our total floating verb
pantransitive