The little house of paper dolls, barely visible in

the sea of orange groves, lighted only by the stumbling

flames of a trash fire

The little house of high heels, damp with surfer’s

bone-blond hair, with no illumination

except moonlight, and that reflected on a Frisbee

The house of sailors and drunks,

the house where she hid in a closet with her book,

the house with pink flamingoes on the living room mirror

the house where the piano sat upright like an old maid

at a dance

These houses, never with spacious stairways

or silver on the sideboards, never

with black Steinways, their lids open

to silk and cigar smoke,

never the book-paneled rooms

with old oak, leather,

no port in a storeroom, she was not even

Daddy’s girl, just the child shaped like a shawl,

thick ankles and wrists, old-woman child,

a little witch

in a little house,

in the woods—actually,

in Southern California we

call them orange

groves.