Stead

by Molly Rose Quinn

In a house, remember the bricks,
first painted blue, then gray,
I’m descending a stair (maroon),
a reminiscent clog.
Here a little ego:
stun, stun, bush, lamp.
When it is January I know my father
is dismantling a lit village.
The lab abuses
the driveway’s right spot:
where the insistence
of dogwood tree
ruins the blacktop.
Interior design like your claw
on my neck, I love it, where a stroke
of hand distinguishes.
On a day like that,
I wear my good gray jacket,
favorite jeans,
hair in braids that I’ve slept on,
they don’t do what I like them to,
a little congestive fuck
you to holidays forthcoming.
The leaves installed opposed
to the laundry room to say:
All our lusty totems
singeing the fringe off, a riff,
a horn from the head of a girl,
a jurassic yes.
Our good house,
the speckled back ladder,
a spiral stair that led from the pool
to the master bedroom,
the trickling boyfriend
sinking soap into his clothes
here, for me, to rid, a man
affixed to measures.

—

MOLLY ROSE QUINN was raised in Memphis, Tennessee. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Black Warrior Review; No, Dear; Two Serious Ladies; Four Way Review; The Fiddleback; and Parallax. She works as a producer of literary events at Symphony Space in Manhattan, and also works with the Brooklyn Book Festival, the Moby-Dick Marathon NYC, and The Atlas Review.