Houses

by Ken Ashworh
The Writer's Block
First Place, September 2019
Judged by Lois P. Jones


The one you were born in
is a gas station now,
pumps in the playroom,
walk-up window for beer.
Daddy always drank too much.

They paved over the spot
where you buried Popeye
the parakeet in a shoebox.

The place your Mama passed away,
neck of a yard, noose-around drive.
She hung on his every word.

Her window boxes still studded
with jonquils that bloom
like madness in the spring .

The one you will die in.
Not much, to be honest,
but it’s home and the cats like it.

They will find you belly up
on the recliner, half empty
bottle of Dewar’s and a sheaf
of unfinished poems.


What is home and how does it define us? Is it the place we spent our earliest years? A beloved city? A country? Home is a part of both our conscious and unconscious thought. In “Houses,” home is not only a physical displacement but an emotional one where mama “hung on every word” and jonquils “bloom like madness.” The underlying metaphor is unsettling and aptly rendered in a few telling phrases which furnish the reader with both the narrator’s history and its present state. Close attention to enjambment and caesura allow the reader to feel the despondent tone a house can hold and its lingering legacy. --Lois P. Jones