Sweetridge

by Alston Tyer

The house is already set to rot, 

this home if ever I had one—

from slant foundation to cracks 

that creep up unslept bedroom walls 

painted over off-white, 

the hydrangea garden besieged 

by frogs mowed flat, the supplanted 

grass squares that sicken yellow under merciless 

Mississippi sun, that grow in thin 

where trees used to be,

the angle of the attic gunshot

situated such that it could’ve only been fired 

by someone falling

or someone flying.