Austin Rodenbiker

Party

Open this house
to darkness. We shall have
a dance floor. I go to answer the phone
but the cord is cut. I cup my hands
around my face and press it to the window.
We have been trying to contact you.
This house comes apart in pieces. I have thought little
about where I left the fragments. A room
with nothing in it but a stone
that floats like something
that has no right to. A room with no fruit.
A room with no windows, some bodies, a view.
This house is at the bottom of a frozen
lake. It’s the naked one on the beach:
you can’t miss it. The vultures form
a circle, the music bubbles.



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Austin Rodenbiker received his MFA in creative writing from the New Writers Project and holds an MA in gender studies from UT Austin. His recent poetry appears in smoking glue gun, Narrative, and fields, among other zines and broadsides. He lives and writes in Austin, TX.