Lesbian Writer Eloise Klein Healy Named First Poet Laureate of Los Angeles

Selling My Mother's House

Here is the treasure map,
erasure as measure,

and what was she thinking
while pinning these pins,

and whose vest was this
and what did it match?

Where are the Wheat Back pennies
in the rainbow of dust,

the Lady Liberty silver dollars
that must never be spent,

and coins of the realm of silence
and coins of the realm of tears?

Where is the stamp block, the first day cover,
the collectible from Certified Dreamtime?

Let me shake the tin plate
passed down from Grandmother,

let me push the button
on the back door knob,

right twist the Dial-A-Lock on the workshop
and drop the steel rod in the sliding door track.

I seem to have missed everything—
the alarming X's on the calendar, the sibilant drapes.

There was one kind of money
hidden in the bread drawer

and another kind of money
in the embroidery thread box

and money that should be
somewhere but isn't.

The only treasure left,
the empty living room where my father died.