What You'll Find In the House You Build

Caitlin Scarano

 

That August day, the chickens would not stop

squawking so my mother went out to investigate.

Hanging out of the birdhouse hole, like a limp six

o’clock hour hand, was the tip of a charcoal tail.

 

Half a decade before – the year my father left

in a flurry of moths, police

lights bouncing off the living room walls – rats,

large and sleek as house cats, had infested the garage

 

to feast on bags of baby chick feed. This rat,

she thought, must have nudged open the roof

of the house. To get at the eggs silent as children.

She took a weapon with her, a sharp-headed shovel.

The snake, her eyes

 

like two bubbles of ink, did not break its stare to blink

against the brutal daylight, its black body in half

a dozen awful coils around the partially eaten

bluebird eggs. The sticky, spilt yoke drying on the cold

 

skin of her. Her body tensed like one great muscle, her  

tongue tasting the air. We mistake and create             

our enemies. My mother                                     

must have killed her. Knocked down the house,

 

pinned her behind her massive head with the tip

of the shovel and dug in. How certain are we

of the ends of our stories? Such a threat

could not have been allowed to make itself at home.

 

Not during the moonless years. Every heel of bread, each                     

hair I pulled from my head, the pews I hid from him                     

beneath, all the doorknobs I mouthed – a nod

to egg-swallowing. To survival.  

 

 

 

second draft // Birdhouse

 

My mother will keep herself untouched as a harvest.

Recall the birdhouse nailed to the clothesline pole

near the porch swing pecan. That August day,

the chickens would stop not squawking

so she went out to investigate. Hanging out

of the birdhouse hole, like the six o’clock hour hand

was the tip of a dark tail. Half a decade before,

the year my father left in a flurry of moths, police

lights bouncing off the living room walls, rats

had invested the garage, feasting on the bags of baby

chick feed. I never saw them, but our neighbor

shamed my mother, claiming the rats were as large

and sleek as house cats. I don’t know what weapon

my mother held, but she always kept a shovel's

pointed head or garden shears ready. I imagine her

wielding something as she inched open the red roof

of the birdhouse, expecting to finally face a rat.

 

The snake, her eyes like two inky beads, did not break

its stare to blink against the brutal daylight, its black

body in half a dozen awful coils around the half-eaten

bluebird eggs. The sticky, spilt yoke drying on the cold

skin of her. Her body tensed like one great muscle, her tongue

tasting the air. What we do to understand. Must my mother

have killed her? How certain are we of the ends

of our stories? A threat could not have been allowed

to make itself at home. Not during the moonless years.

Every heel of bread, each hair I pulled from my head,

all the doorknobs I mouthed – a nod to egg-swallowing, to survival.  

 

first draft // One More Virginia

And my mother will keep herself untouched as a harvest. When I think of all the times we talked about birdhouses, I can only recall the one nailed to the close line pole near the porch swing pecan. That August day, the chickens would stop not squawking so in the afternoon she went out to investigate. Hanging out of the birdhouse hole like the six o’clock hour hand was the tip of a dark tail. Half a decade before, the year my father left in a flurry of moths, police lights bouncing off the living room walls, rats had invested the garage, feasting on the bags of baby chick feed. I never saw them, but our neighbor shamed my mother, claiming the rats were as large and sleek as house cats. I don’t know what weapon she held, but she always kept a baseball bat or garden shears ready. I imagine my mother wielded something as she inched open the red roof of the birdhouse, expecting to finally face a rat. The snake, her eyes like two inky beads, did not break its stare to blink against the brutal daylight, its black body in half a dozen awful coils around the half-eaten bluebird eggs. The sticky, spilt yoke drying on the cold skin of her. Her body tensed like one great muscle, her tongue tasting the air. What we do to understand. My mother must have killed her. Surely, such a threat could not have been allowed to make itself at home. Not during the moonless years. Every heel of bread, each hair I pulled from my head, all the doorknobs I mouthed – a nod to survival.  

 

Caitlin's Commentary

 

This poem in its first draft started with an image/story and a line (that weren't necessarily related). First, I remembered a story my mother told me about finding a huge black rat snake inside a birdhouse box in our backyard years ago and I knew I wanted to write a poem about it. (I don't actually remember how the story ends, so I tried to reflect this in the final draft of the poem while building tension.) I sat down to write the first draft of the poem and this line ("And my mother will keep herself untouched as a harvest") just came out of me. I actually love this line, but, as you can see, it was phased out of the poem by the third (final) draft. I think it just didn't fit with this particular story. The first stanza or two of the poem ended up being dedicated to the narrative - setting up the rest of the poem.

The first draft (the prose poem) is just the space where I tried to get the memory on the page. You can see the form starting to take shape in the second draft of the poem. By the third draft, I've shaped and tightened the form to these 4 line stanzas (with the connecting line between the two sections where the poem shifts on the page, which is also where the story turns suddenly). 

Early on, even in the first draft, it became clear that the poem wasn't just about my mother and the snake, but a metaphor for abuse (emotional and sexual) that was going on within my family at the time. I realized that I was drawn to this story, the image of the snake hiding in the birdhouse, for how it reflected the threat within our own house. But I also empathized (and still do) with the snake and its need to feed. I try to make my poetry as appropriately complex and ambiguous as possible. I don't want to oversimplify or villainize any person or thing, because no person or situation is that simple. 

 
 

Caitlin Scarano is a poet in the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee PhD creative writing program. She is the winner of the Spring 2014 AROHO Orlando Prize for Flash Fiction and of the 2015 Indiana Review Poetry Prize, judged by Eduardo Corral. Her first two chapbooks, The White Dog Year and The Salt and Shadow Coiled, were recently published by dancing girl press and Zoo Cake Press. Her work can be found in Crazyhorse, Colorado Review, and Flyway.