Another Vacant House

I had a neighbor from rural Indiana.
Her license plate tells me so.

She was a single mother who was
always accompanied by weird,
construction-type men
who drove pick-up trucks.

They radiated of stereotype.

Six crying children constantly
getting knocked over
by a Chow-mix
tied to a forgotten apple tree.

One President’s Day, a boy,
say 14 or so,
walked into a small,
white shed;

the kind for skinning fish.

He closed the door and urinated
out the tiny window
framed between
his penis and nature.

Right before I moved to Chicago,
she packed up a moving van and
was gone. The house foreclosed,

yellow stickers adhered to the front door.

A repo-man knocked on my door and
asked about her Ford Focus. I told him

that they had moved out.
It only took about three hours to
pack their belongings.

At night, the rest of the neighborhood
picked the tulips and roses

still thriving in the recession.