poem by Lisa Rizzo (WHEN I MOVED Poetry and Prose Series)

That phone number rang

in the blue crackerbox house
at 17827 Baker Avenue
in a manufactured town
called Country Club Hills.

Smack in the middle
of Illinois prairie,
soybean field
behind our suburban lawn.
There were no hills.

The day we moved in,
I sat on the bare tile floor,
long rectangle stretching before me.
I felt crumbly inside,
cried for the house before,

with cherry tree and grape vines,
white clapboard with green shutters,
stairs and dormer windows
like a house from a book.
But no, we couldn’t stay there.

We had to leave
like we always did,
one house right after the other --
until the one I remember most.
It was ugly but it lasted