This is-- here's a-- if you ever built a house, this--
the child is abandoned at the beginning of the book
and it's a circle that I try to complete
at the end of the book.
I'm going to read you a poem where
Martin, the main character of the book, has a baby,
or his wife has a baby.
And here's the way it goes.
They build a house for themselves
and here's what happens.
This is after he moves in with Gabriella.
"We bought a small house along the river in south Side Barrio.
A shack out of pried boards from the door to get in.
Half acre of land in the back, heaped
with decades of scrap, rusted wire
fence, and creosote railroad tires,
tumbleweeds, mountain of decay, and harvest
never picked weaving itself slowly into the dirt again.
I gutted the plaster frame house, nailed, puttied, roofed,
plumbed, poured cement, sheet rock, tile, carpeted, tore out,
reset, piled, burned, cleaned, cemented, installed, washed,
and painted, trimmed, pruned, shoveled, raked, sawed,
hammered, measured, stuccoed, until calloused handed,
muscle firmed, sleek hard bodied, our small house rose
from a charred, faded grave marker,
a weather rotted roost for junkies,
and vagrants, wind, rain, and sun splintered
jagged stories of storms on.
I corrected, rewrote upon this plaster wood
tablet, our own version of love, family, and power."