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The Vacant House Next Door, a poem by Hiromi Yoshida


The Vacant House Next Door
by Hiromi Yoshida


Questions hover thickly, (gargantuan
moths) tattered curtain bits
framing basement
windows were


actually mere cobwebs in the
vacant house on E. Atwater Ave.


Bay windows stare
sullenly into adamant
sunlight, (stark contrast with Indiana


University fraternity houses and the
Co-Op on E. 3rd St.) avalanche of


dust motes,
debris of unknown
years—a biohazard I dare not step
into (despite the enigmatic
threshold


where the door
once was), crumbling
and festering—collapsing in upon its own
precarious skeleton self—begging to be razed


to the still fertile grounds.


Hiromi Yoshida is a winner of multiple Indiana University Writers' Conference awards. Her poems have been published in The Asian American Literary Review, Indiana Voice Journal, Evergreen Review, and Bathtub Gin. She organized the Poets 4 Unity monthly reading series in Bloomington, Indiana, in response to Election Day 2016.