Estate Sale

I bend over cardboard boxes
laid out on the lawn
like eggs in their carton,
squatting, sift
through a glass pitcher
painted with blue cornflowers,
filled with jewelry
mixed with rat poison pellets,

and make a mental note
to raise my number
for the 1920’s typewriter.
At the hotdog truck
there is a Chevy Chase lookalike
wearing sunglasses, dirty sweatpants.
Maybe he’s gathering material
like the rest of us.

The owner of this house
stands with her children,
who climbed these trees,
tossed the metal hose nozzle
onto this crescent drive.
The bidding starts.
She is crying.

ξ

"Estate Sale” was first published in The George Street Carnival.

Erin Dorney is the author of I Am Not Famous Anymore: Poems after Shia LaBeouf (Mason Jar Press, 2018). Her writing has appeared in HAD, Passages North, Paper Darts, Juked, and elsewhere. She is the co-founder of Fear No Lit. www.erindorney.com

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