Estate Sale, West Texas

Vincent Hostak

August 27, 2023

I’ve had enough and yet I

haven’t even started

A coarse, judgmental voice 

squeals from attic stairs 

Half of all my weight 

suspended in the air 

The other squeezing out 

these sharp short-lived commands

“It must all be gleaned and stacked,”

a song that urges on

Here’s a low buzz, beat of wings 

the carpenter bees 

arrived through covert holes

pierced by probing tree limbs

unveiling a Museum

of Delicate Destruction

Gather now all things that

“won’t do it on their own”

A ferment trapped in boxes

glazed by covert drips

Sort the unstained books,

shake out the hidden nits

While the well-dressed bees strain

on, more rafters yet to drill  

Mid-life to its very end

Chicago…El Paso

From basements to a crawlspace,

a cargo to please few

The furniture’s now gone, for

sale in other lands

Remnants are our own:

pots pinched by tiny hands,

A letter worth the frame,

scents of dogwood, cigarettes

These badlands have no sea-god

to lift from ranch home wrecks 

Just the agent folded with

his notes beside the poplars

He perks up, makes a signal 

registers my haul

No re-entries now

this line’s where I’ll stall

In cool unreckoned rain

as sweet as cactus honey

Vincent Hostak is a writer and media producer from Texas now living near the Front Range of Colorado south of Denver. His recently published poems are found in the journals Sonder Midwest and the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas and as a contributor to the TPA. He writes & produces the podcast: Crossings-the Refugee Experience in America.