The white house on the corner of our block has been trouble for some time. A couple used to live there a few years back—they didn’t own a car, so one of them was always walking to the bus stop. They had a kid, a little boy, who played shirtless and barefoot in the front yard with toy guns and balls and plastic swords. But they’re long gone now, and this new crowd moved in with their dented cars and cracked windshields, backseats full of garbage bags. Hard to say how many people lived in the house at one time, but probably close to a dozen. People were always coming and going, and it didn’t take long for us to realize it was a trap house. The overgrown lilac bush, the lawn of dandelions and fast food wrappers and cigarette butts, clumps of grass and moss growing through the cracks in the sidewalk, pools of shimmering oil gathering under the cars up on cinder blocks in the street. The house was raided by the cops some three or four weeks ago, and this morning there’s a pile of stuff by the curb: a child-sized mattress, three boxes of plastic toys and coloring books, garbage bags stuffed with clothes, a small bookshelf made of particleboard, a snow shovel, an office chair, and one black high heel. The porch light flickers over the pink eviction notice taped to the front window. We wonder where they’ve gone, the skinny men and women who stayed hidden behind the curtains of that house like it was a tomb, dark and full of mystery, smelling of smoke and decay.
Janelle Cordero is an interdisciplinary artist and educator living in the seventh most hipster city in the U.S. Her writing has been published in dozens of literary journals, including Harpur Palate, Hobart, and The Louisville Review, while her paintings have been featured in venues throughout the Pacific Northwest. Janelle is the author of three books of poetry: Many Types of Wildflowers (V.A. Press, 2020), Woke to Birds (V.A. Press, 2019), and Two Cups of Tomatoes (P.W.P. Press, 2015). Stay connected with Janelle's work at www.janellecordero.com.
