Portable House Co.

By Megan Grumbling

After Buster Keaton’s 1920 short film One Week, in which just–married Buster and Sybil are given a build–it–yourself house kit by the villain, who has tampered with the numbers on the crates.

Oh go ahead, young newlywed, just try
to fit together this whole bad luck lot
the bad guy slipped you. Frown and furrow, scry
your manual, stagger and cant each slat
as per the numbers on the boxtop. Hold
fast — ladder, chimney — hug, heave, hoist. Use all
the parts. Shingle and nail. Saw off you own
pine two–by–four perch second floor — but fall
to ad hoc front yard heaven, common bliss
amidst the jury–rigging, quick wise crack
of Sybil’s grin, her homespun camp–smoke mess,
warm hobo breakfast waiting. Then, climb back
to trap–hatch planks and pulleys, elbow grease
against the rafters, hammer, piano, safe
in freefall. This whole schtick is serious
comedy: Duck! Bend from the knees! Hold on!
But then, hold up: This time the villain’s rigged
you good. Step back: Not even close to flush
or square, flayed funhouse framing all at odds

with sense and gravity. But ah — the blush
of Sybil, guileless vandal drawing hearts
freehand, sweet black–paint vagrance on the cheap–
ass pre–fab clapboard, on an urchin lark
of leveling, of work and love. No need
is quite as true. So come bad weather, rain
in parlor, reckonings, cyclones and spins,
the whole hang–dog shabang stuck on the train
tracks, then — look up. See how the fix is in
the failing. Fail. Leave it at that, right there,
rail–side and splintered. Rise, turn tail and leap
from smithereens to shrug, slough, swear
off all bad guys and false directions. Keep
what’s on your back; get out of Dodge. You’ll come
upon some better gifts. Head down the line
now. Sure, the bad guy switched your one
to four, your three to eight, but you’ll soon find
someplace, finally, for good, where you’ll alight,
write Welcome upside down, but spin it right.