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Casa Nueva

We fancied ourselves builders and decided to build a house in a one day.

We collected planks of woods tossed in our alley, dug out left over arrow nails from the ground, and carried them together to the space beneath our Fletcher street porch. When we finished our south-facing wall one of us said Let’s make an experiment, and we both turned towards the blue plastic rain barrel that has always been underneath our porch.


the blue plastic rain barrel filled with dads motor oil     :the environment

our broken toys and those we found forgotten               :the variables

question:  if pushed down into the barrel which toys will drown

                              and which will be polished and playable again?

We never finished building our porch house,

We never finished the test,

We left the blue barrel uncovered—

                                                                           twelve months

                                                                           later

                                                                          when you chose dad

                                                                          and I chose mom

                                                                          the barrel overflowed onto our backyard grass

                                                                          drowning everything in sight.

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