They’re demolishing
the house next door to mine.
The weatherboard cracks
and splinters
as it’s torn
from the building’s foundation.
Each piece is tossed
haphazardly
into a pile
like fallen soldiers
into a ditch.
The wrecking ball
crashes into the single brick facade.
“The single brick facade
gives the house character,”
a real estate agent once said.
Piece by piece
is felled or crushed until
nothing remains
but a cluster of grey rubble
where the neighbor children used to play hopscotch.
They’re demolishing
the house next door to mine.
It was here yesterday,
and now it’s gone.
It’s funny,
I think,
how some things are like that.
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I like this as whole (as a casual reader), but there are a few stylistic and format questions I have. I suspect that the author intends for the reader to have a specific response to the ‘broken’ (my word) lines—perhaps a device used to physically reflect the dismantling that is occurring in the scene; however, I don’t think I can make this determination based on this single piece. Otherwise, the scene would read the same, I believe, as a single paragraph, which would then beg whether this would still be considered a “poem”. There may be an underlying thematic or other structure that I am unaware of.
Additionally, I wonder what the author’s intent is for the image of the fallen soldiers—I’m not sure that soldiers are typically “tossed haphazardly into a pile” into a ditch—perhaps during a genocide or if they are “enemy soldiers” but that is not alluded to in this piece. Perhaps it’s a reference to a larger political message about war in general, but once again, I don’t want to attribute such things to a single piece and to an author whose work I am unfamiliar with.
My favorite part: “…crashes into the single brick façade. “The single brick façade gives the house character…” I like the alliteration and the depth this adds—that works as a great transition within the work.
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