The House That Jack Built

by John Roche

There is a house on Crescent,
Buffalo, New York
no oddity
American foursquare
no Doctor Who phone booth out front
but always a chair for an Odysseus who arrives with a new spin on an old tale

Not Burchfield’s House of Mystery
but Ohio just as true
a triple-story

Not FL W’s Darwin Martin
(that’s up around the block)
but just as open–
the music bubbling forth (piano or vibes
up the well to gnosis

Not exactly Corbin’s interstitial barsakh
but a space-within-to-be-lived-in
Wright paraphrasing Okakura translating Lao Tzu:
why the house isn’t the doors or walls or ceiling or floor

Just that ole crescent moon older than Islam as Legba’s crossroads predate their cross
homed Ishtar and diamond-eyed Venus hearing flute of lapis lazuli
that the dead may inhale the incense
Aphrodite at her milky bath
the horns of our dilemma full filled
stories passing through gate of horn
transparent to the few

Through Dolphy’s music Jack’s gaze
—silence before speech—
open book
between us