buyer must bring imagination by Sara Clancy
~ after Marc Chagall

clearly this house should be
upside down and balanced
on its gable, while goats
play green fiddles
and old men hunker down
in a sky of gypsy colors

there should be a supine
bride floating over the threshold
to meet the artisan who
nailed each warped clapboard
to canvas in a fable passed down
from elder to beast

they would meet
in an upstairs room
framed in orange scented
light, their bed draped
with the precarious balance
of fabrication

and their lips never touch
as they glide past each other
recasting each tired proportion
with an arabesque in the air

Sara Clancy graduated from the writer’s program at the University of Wisconsin long ago. Among other places, her poems have appeared in The Madison Review, Teemings, Houseboat and Owen Wister Review. She lives in the Desert Southwest with her husband, their dog and a 20 year old goldfish named Darryl.