Carol Hamilton
Hurtful Homes
Cover Art: David Wojnarowicz, Untitled from "Sex Series." 1990. Gelatin silver print. MOMA.
Hurtful Homes
I always wonder if our spirits
somehow haunt those homes we so lived in. A space, once filled, can surely never be the same. Spirits haunted our old 1910 pre-fabricated, Sears Roebuck home at the edge of an evil Ohio woods. The house, filled with pain (even the little ones were visited in dreams) is the place that still holds a wash of the tears I shed when we left. A friend said, “But you had nothing but pain here!” Surely we knew we would ever bear the scars of there, history’s fingers stroking our faces yet. Now the house is blue, no longer red-shingled, and the row of Italian cypress and the generous dogwood are as gone as we. I have never re-entered our old homes scattered about the world, have only studied their new faces, standing outside. But I can count the steps from here to there for each, steps taken and re-taken as I step out the story of how the past is never ever truly left behind. |
Carol Hamilton has recent and upcoming publications in Commonweal Magazine, Bluestem, Southwestern American Literature, Pour Vida, Adirondack Review, The Maynard, Sanskrit Literary Magazine, U.S.1 Worksheet, Broad River Review, Homestead Review, Shot Glass Journal, Poem, Louisiana Literature, Haight Ashbury Poetry Journal, The Aurorean, Blue Unicorn, Birmingham Poetry Review, Pigeonholes Review, and others. She has published 17 books: children's novels, legends, and poetry, most recently, SUCH DEATHS from Virtual Arts Cooperative Press Purple Flag Series. She is a former Poet Laureate of Oklahoma..
past, Madelyn Chen next, Jennifer Judge