Colleen Louise Barry

House

 
1. living room

smoke pestering beauty around
the rafters where your grandfather’s ghost
makes small adjustments
in your home life

a phrase you keep hearing
i think she might have a kind of difficult trouble
in her home life

you imagine a large violence
a kind of sick mountain eruption
from which the blood red nasturtiums
your mother floats in glass jars
above the family photos
bloom
 

2. porch

we used to make whole towns out of the dirt on your front porch
some hanging plants

swaying with the weather

this rainy day

i find the small deform of your clavicle
make my palm fit inside it

press into it

after a good amount of time
i can feel the light your skin is screwed on by
 

3. bedroom

oh you i dream
what kind of trouble am i
 

4. basement

make yourself slowly ascend the stairs
the more afraid you are
the slower you should go
while you are doing this a good thing
to think about is O. avosetta
a bee that makes a petal sandwich
out of flowers and a mud plug
inside a small burrow
it is the perfect environment for the egg
humid safe colorful
like afternoon august church services
staring at the stained glass
 

5. mud room

some kinds of love taste like getting your face smothered by a palm in wet soil
 

6. kitchen

i think this might be easier
if i direct it toward my father
dad i love it so much
how you always load the dishwasher
with the pointy ends down

Colleen Louise Barry is a poet in the MFA program for Poets & Writers at UMass Amherst. Before this, she was a Publishing Assistant at Random House. Previous work has appeared in Ilk Magazine, Synonym Journal, Smoking Glue Gun Magazine, and others. Find her and her writing at colleenlouise.tumblr.com.