The Street with Sinking Houses (part 1)

Roman’s house was the stooping puke-green one at the end of the street.
After his grandfather ventured out one winter and suffered a stroke,
Roman’s mom, Zladka, started drinking more.
The walls absorbed the sick man’s shame
And his crooked mouth’s prayers for death
And pressed harder on the aging foundation.
Roman died in a car accident on his way to England,
where he worked as a cook.
He and his granddad were buried around the same time.
Grieving, Zladka drowned herself in hard liqueur
and the house spun, rocked,
its floors groaning like a wobbly boat in a storm.  
As shadows pooled,
she smeared the cracks in the walls
with clotted blood from her vomit.
Her bloated belly made Zladka wonder if she was pregnant
though she only rubbed herself raw
with spit, cigarette butts, and dry weeds,
plucked from the lonely sidewalk outside.
The house grew heavier,
its foundation a hungry root,
drinking in darkness for the cirrhotic, petrified fetus.
When the ground covered the mailbox and the house number
Zladka crawled out through the gap between the wooden porch
and the top of the door
then smashed a big hole in the coppery red tiled roof
with an ax.
As she settled in, the smoke from her cigarettes
rose in the air like from a second chimney.
Bottle of whisky in her chubby hand,
a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth,
Zladka sat on the creaking floor of the attic
barfing dust,
waiting for the mailwoman with the welfare cheque
and for her water to break.