Houses

Layered walls
with stucco used
to patch a hole.

Construction on top of workers’
cigarette butts and
the phlegm of burnt lungs.

Empty coffee cups crushed beneath
Wolverine boots or the treads of
Bobcat diesels.

Beams and nails,
the scattered flesh
that goes into a home.

Plaster chips and graded earth,
smoothed-over graves,
archaeological insignificance.

Life as document:
time capsules of iron
for alien audiences.