Mather Schneider
The Loft
The barn loft where we live now
looks like a small-town furniture store
that’s been foreclosed:
bedroom here, living room
there, we set it all up
just like real life. No walls split
the drafty attic space
and no light bulbs glow
through the afterhours pall
under the tall tin roof
that tears its ragged tongues in the wind.
It is feng shui
for schizos, everything warped
on the knot-holed floor
chipped and splintered from the move.
We break so many mirrors
bad luck becomes a joke.
Add to that the rat scat
in our drawers, table legs turned
to corn cobs,
the ghostly lingerie
of molted snakeskins
draped on the rungs of the loft ladder,
insects chowing
on the shellacked walnut sideboard
and dug in
to bed frames, the muffled clash
of grinding molars
deep within our pillows.
And here we try to sleep
too dumb to understand
what we are really up against—
the foul creeping thing
that stowed away in a crate
we brought with us
and shoved to the darkest corner we could find.
Other work by Mather Schneider