Foundation

I turned five years old
forty years ago and sat
on the back steps waiting
for my father   for a visit

Waiting for his last visit
my back to the house
on the gravel steps
where the railing rusted

loose in the cement    rusted
off and the house was
condemned      When the landlord
died     the metal and gravel crumbled

back into earth      crumbled
into dust except the basement
stayed behind     still intact
Even in the ancient

world      outlines of ancient
houses stay        Tourists kneel
on the ground to touch the sites  
Mostly they make a single visit

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Jessica Cuello is the author of Hunt (The Word Works, 2017) and Pricking (Tiger Bark Press, 2016). She has been awarded The 2017 CNY Book Award, The 2016 Washington Prize, The New Letters Poetry Prize, a Saltonstall Fellowship, and The New Ohio Review Poetry Prize. New poems can be found or are forthcoming in American Literary Review, On the Seawall, Jet Fuel Review, Tinderbox, and Image. She is co-poetry editor at Tahoma Literary Review.