Valerie Mart Wallace Chicago, IL

Valerie Martt Wallace

Sitting in the Outhouse, Thinking About Your Mother

who bought this place with your stepfather all those years
ago, in the age of cocktail parties, before the word inappropriate

could rise as a defense. The trees, in the dark, are witness
to the terrible things she did and all the loving ways you are

with your boys and how in the morning, I’ll wake beside you
in the lumpy bed and you’ll go downstairs and put wood

on for a fire and scoop the coffee out of the can. And all around
us the good clean air. And out back, next year’s project

you envision, a pump toilet and new outhouse
to replace the hike in the dark. And even though I love

that the door rotted off means at night I can sit and watch stars pinch
the sky, during the day the flies still close in and the two van

gogh prints she hung inside are so covered by a scrim
of filth I can barely recognize the boy gathering wheat

that I say, even though the view is beautiful, let’s tear
it down, let me hold the hammer, let me take the first swing.