Jennifer Kwon Dobbs
A House in Nicosia
White curtains flutter as if a childish hand
bats at distance
flicks plaster off
ramshackle walls
papered with a politician’s face.
In Time’s slow fray
he’s a target
practice for tower guards
overlooking a football field
of plastic bags, red spray cans. A train’s
outline heaves across the bleacher’s height.
Down concrete steps
a diaspora
of feral cats congress.
Ribbed with longing
they’re the only ones who can cross.
It’s all guesswork
smeared in a childish hand
writing that wide and mortal pang
called History
that human cry
forced from home one morning.
Through dust and shadow, I see flashlights
bullhorns, dogs, a crash
of drawers, metal spoons and forks,
a long crawl
space under pine boards
torn up revealing a secret
darkness where no one hid
the money, what’s left of the canopy
frame’s blue drapes
that her husband pulled back
to make love to her.
Young, they left the balcony doors open.
Boys laughed and kicked a ball past midnight.
Now the mattress straddles a threshold
like tides summoning a raft
tied to the firmament.
Tell me.
If two loves claim this house
to whom does it belong?
