The Engineers Lament the Inevitability of Foundation Collapse

Sara Biggs Chaney

 

We are all too familiar

with the failures of soil--

 

how the earth tires

of a uniform swelling.

 

Problems occur.  

The floor runs slant.

 

Drop a marble on the doormat;

gravity will attend.

 

Per the manual, we call this  

“interior warning sign A,”

 

or, over beers,

a bold maneuver.

 

Someone will always shout, God knows,

the clay will have its own ideas.

 

We can watch,

but we cannot predict.

 

When the doors will decline

framing,

 

the windows,

they will require


 

no further association

with the plaster.

third draft // The Engineer Reflects on the Inevitable

We are all too familiar

with the failures of soil

tired of uniform swelling.

 

Problems occur. The floor runs slant.

Drop a marble on the door mat;

with gravity its only guide.

 

Per the manual, we call that

“interior warning sign A.”

or, over beers, a bold maneuver.

 

And God knows,

the clay will have ideas of its own.

You can watch, but you cannot predict.

 

When the doors will decline framing.

When the windows will excuse themselves

From any further collaboration.

 

// second draft 

As it turns out, a rock cannot grow wings. A thing is itself—

Something I learned from the man and his books.


Foundation Failure

I’ve heard tell of a floor so crooked.

Drop a quarter at the front--

watch it roll out the back door in three seconds flat.

They call that an interior warning sign.

Going forward, problems may occur.

The soil may tire of its uniform swelling.

And the clay will have its own ideas.

You can watch, but you cannot predict.

When the doors will say no to the doorframes.

When the windows will excuse themselves

from any further collaboration with the plaster.

 

Sara's Commentary

This poem is a marriage of prompt and memory.

The prompt was simple: If the shifting foundation of a house could speak, what would it say?

I’m not sure what drew me to this question. I think that, at the time, I was interested in the interplay between stability and change (I’ve written poems about glaciers in the past that take on similar ideas). Early drafts of the poem were written from the perspective of the stone foundation itself.

The memory was simple, as well: A few years ago, my husband and I were considering buying a house. One of the first houses we viewed had a floor so crooked that you could drop a quarter on one side of the house and it would roll all the way to the other side.

As I revised, I became more interested in highlighting the voice, language, and perspective of the engineer who might study, diagnose, and (ideally) prevent foundation collapse. I researched some of their technical jargon and tried to work it into the poem.

In later stages of revision, I became more and more concerned with tiny decisions about syntax and sound. There were many stages of revision at this point, and each one happened very quickly. That part of the process felt a lot like combing through the poem in order to produce its smoothest and most perfect iteration.  I would read the lines over and over again, thinking “yes” or “no” and making small but (I believe) significant changes in response to those gut instincts.

Towards the end, I was going for a cadence that was truly conversational while packing a lyrical punch, of sorts. I also wanted the conversational syntax to collide with the poems abstractions and logical leaps, leaving us to wonder—just what kind of “engineers” are these, exactly? The poem became (as my poems often are) terse, enigmatic, evoking more than it is describing directly. And of course, I ended up once again utilizing the couplet form (which I like for its mysterious economy).

At any rate, I decided this poem was finished when I could find no more tangles through which to comb.

Sara Biggs Chaney received her Ph.D. in English in 2008 and currently teaches first-year and upper-level writing in Dartmouth's Institute for Writing and Rhetoric. Her most recent chapbook, Ann Coulter's Letter to the Young Poets, was released from dancing girl press in November, 2014. Sara's poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in RHINO, Sugar House Review, Columbia Poetry Review, [PANK], Juked, and elsewhere. You can catch up with Sara at sarabiggschaney.com