Living Room

for Deirdre

We all slept in our mother's living room

On humid nights before she got central

With the window unit set on high,

In sleeping bags, on camp cots and the sofa.

A whisper couldn't carry above that din.

So if you talked it was out loud over a motor

Revving up for frost, throat that never cleared.

Lucky to steep through the night, then come unblessed:

Waking, wanting to stay right there,

Remembering yesterday was hot and tomorrow

Would be too, with nothing crossing off

The summer days but that cold-air box

Whining at your head, blind compact weather,

There to soothe, solid-state. Dad never

Got around to pissing in the vent, but Martin did.

One season Dad kept to his room. Sweet.

Kids play a game, How Would You Rather Die?

I think I'd rather freeze to death before I'd bum.

Before dawn the fan would start ticking

On ice caked in a lattice on the filter.

A head-ache in the kitchen

Sent us back like cool ghosts after breakfast,

But by then the air had mingled warm.

It was a place a mother meant to save

Do you think I'll ever have just one nice room?

Then it was somewhere a father

Could be put in chains and led away.