Poem: Households, from Anne-Marie Turza’s The Quiet

In honour of National Poetry Month, Globe Books is pleased to bring you poems from some of the season's most exciting new collections.

HOUSEHOLDS

"... of unknown origin, perhaps connected to the root of hide (v.)."

– house, the Etymology Dictionary

Have you a house like mine, with doors to other houses?

One cupboard, whenever it's cracked, smells damply of threes:a roadside cross, snowfall, a bell of glass

ringing darkly in a house from another century.

A boy lives there, with his stranger's life.

As for mine: it too, ringing darkly.

The job of a house is to have a roof.

And the job of a life? It might be anything,

made of wood or drift or warning.

– Anne-Marie Turza

Households is excerpted from Anne-Marie Turza's debut book The Quiet, published this month by House of Anansi.