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      November 27, 2020RemodelingMary Angelino

      Struck with purpose, my father and grandfather
      worked silently together, in a language
      of pointing and nods. My brother and I knew
      not to ask questions when we brought them lunch
      on plastic trays: tuna salad sandwiches
      swaddled in napkins, the pitcher of lemonade
      that left vanishing halos on top of the brick wall.
      They’d work until the sky forgot the sun,
      our new red door (only one in the neighborhood)
      pulsing beneath the streetlights’ glow. My father
       
      would lose that house and never earn enough
      to own again. What mattered
      was they let us carve our names
      into wet cement. And for two perfect months
      she was whoever we wanted her to be—
      that woman kneeling in the moonlight—
      the marble sink shimmering
      in the middle of a wall-less, roof-less room.

      from #69 - Fall 2020

      Mary Angelino

      “I’ve been working on this poem since my MFA days (2007–2011) at the University of Arkansas–Fayetteville, where I wrote mostly about loss—in this case, my childhood home—and my attempts to unearth its mysteries in images that have stayed with me (like initials in cement and the marble sink). Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘One Art’ is persistent and luminous for me; I love how she builds to the big losses. Her ‘—Write it!—’ is why I write.”

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