my Bijou

for Nancy…who loves old buildings

my Bijou in afternoon smells chick hatchery
dried parsley, and old woman’s shoes…
then evening steeps it to bean soup
sour laundry soap and moldy windowsills

rats nose twitch and scurry each way over
through and under…conceiving…birthing
of their kind and oblivious to faint…faint hiss
of massed cockroach mouthing glue beneath
frail wallpaper…Chinese pagoda pattern

warm brown bats swarm to fecund evening
through jag-ed shard-ed windows…
while molting doves coo guttural on ledges
snatch spiders from dew spangled webs…
and chill shrinks wood to incremental creak

my Bijou…no longer courts a populace;
it slips now historic…with attendant  new
assemblage resplendent in decay

 

Bonnie Marshall

Photography by Joey B. Lax-Salinas