We Bought a Small House

We bought a small house along the river, in Southside barrio. A shack I pried boards from the front door to get in- half-acre of land in the back heaped with decades of scrap-rusted wire fencing, creosote railroad ties, tumbleweeds, a mountain of decaying harvest never picked, weaving itself slowly into the dirt again. I gutted the plaster frame house, nailed, puttied, roofed, plumbed, poured cement, sheet-rocked, tiled, carpeted, tore-out, re-set, piled, burned, cleaned, cemented, installed, washed and painted, trimmed, pruned, shoveled, raked, sawed, hammered, measured, stuccoed, until, calloused handed, muscle-firmed, sleek hard bodied, our small house rose from a charred, faded gravemarker, a weather-rotted roost for junkies and vagrants, wind, rain, and sun splintered jagged stories of storms on, I corrected, re-wrote upon this plaster wood tablet, our own version of love, family and power.