M A R G I E  The American Journal of Poetry     www.margiereview.com

Published Annually in the Fall                                     MARGIE  P. O. BOX 250, CHESTERFIELD, MO 63006-0250

The sign had worked so far:  no other cars

Had beaten the grass down between the ruts,

And no one had stomped a path through the knee-high lawn

Lately or walked the plank up to the porch

And pushed the door on its only hinge but you.

Whatever could be wrenched or crowbarred loose

Had been, including the kitchen sink, and the floor

Was hanging tough by its linoleum.

In the living room, someone had built a fire

For hotdogs or heat, but not in the fireplace.

The holes gouged in the wallboard between studs

Went all the way to the woods, the holes in the ceiling

Went all the way to the sky, and the three holes

In the bathroom floor were offering

Indoor plumbing direct to the foundation.

You inspected the scene of the crime.  A few remains

Of the biggest, longest, maybe the worst party

Ever.  Three sticks of furniture.  The last dishrag.

A tag end of a nightgown.  In the bedroom,

No telling where the Beautyrest had been

Or why.  You found some overdue grocery bills

And receipts for speeding fines.  A note saying, Baby,

Gone to the dump again.  You went outside.

A swing-set with no swings.  A slide with no ladder.

And what comes down the chimney?  Half the chimney.

Along the side path, blossoming in the sun,

Bright, everlasting slivers of windowpanes.

A trellis where the rose hadn't been wild

Enough to keep from choking on itself.

A wooden pump-tower, knock-kneed, straddling a well.

Over the barn door, a rusty horseshoe

Wrong side down.

Inside, some shotgun shells and barn owl pellets,

But the owls themselves no longer living aloft.

Underfoot, not enough straw for a scarecrow.

In the back yard, a tipped-over lawn chair,

No grimier than your jeans.  You sat in it,

Neck deep in wavering grass, drinking your lunch

To celebrate all this picturesque failure.

It made you feel irrationally happy.

Being nosy and on your own, you'd crossed the threshold

With the diffident easy bluster of a landlord

Or a crooked building inspector or a burglar

Professional to the core or a case-worker

With a warrant or a tour guide casing a ruin.

You felt so self-contained, so worldly (and you

Still middle-aged) to see these premises

Vacated like the premises you'd made

About a wife and hypothetical family

Once upon a time on a model farm,

You went to the country tavern at sundown

And, under the influence of a jukebox

And other brilliant conversationalists,

Joined some familiar strangers out for a night:

Jocose, Bellicose, Lachrymose, Comatose.

DAVID WAGONER has published seventeen books of poems, most recently The House of Song (Univ. of Illinois Press, 2002), and ten novels, one of which, The Escape Artist, was made into a movie by Francis Ford Coppola.  He won the Lilly Prize in 1991, has been nominated twice for the National Book Award, and has won the Zabel Prize, the Blumenthal-Leviton-Blonder Prize, the Eunice Tietjens Prize, the English-Speaking Union Prize, the Levinson Prize, and the Union League Prize of Poetry (Chicago), and the William Stafford Memorial Award from the Pacific Northwest Booksellers.  He was a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets for 23 years.  He has taught at the University of Washington since 1954 and was the editor of Poetry Northwest till its end in 2002.