SHIRLEY JACKSON: A Light Upstairs
This house is empty
Yet hardly unexplored –
Something stirs aloft.
The fat lady’s afraid because
She cannot climb
She sits and eats like a lonely child
Celebrating birthdays
A cat along each shoulder.
She lifts her tarot card and listens
Her own heart gasping in its womb of flesh.
She fears cars and crowds and planes
Elevators and department stores –
Reads only stories where killers
Are pursued, writes only tales
Where innocents are stoned.
It’s hereditary.
The angry villagers once burned
Her grandpa’s house.
She smokes anyway, lighting repeat matches in
An unsafe mansion where
None escape alive.
Alysse Aallyn 