Stacked car tires, spray-painted purple,
Jeweled skulls and handlebars,
A silhouette of a jazz quartet painted
On the garage door, flickering mint green lights
Cover the side of the house, while a full moon,
Craters and all,
Takes residence in the upstairs bedroom window.
She has an unruly chihuahua/pug mix
And a semi-feral cat named Vinnie
Who kills chipmunks for her kittens.
Everyday I walk past, everyday
It’s something new.
“I wish I could stop,” my neighbor says, with her unruly
Ink black hair and tattoos creeping up her neck,
“But it helps keep me sober.”
I know what she means, can’t help but agree.
There’s no right way of going about it.
That haunted house in our heads,
Howling to be built on the outside.

 

Troy Schoultz was a lecturer at the University of Wisconsin– Oshkosh from 2010 until 2020. His poems, stories, and reviews have appeared in Palooka, Seattle Review, Rattle, Slipstream, Chiron Review, Santa Monica Review, Steel Toe Review, Midwestern Gothic and several others. He’s the author of two chapbooks and three full length collections: A Field of Bonfires Sings (Wolf Angel Press, 1999) and Good Friday (Tamafyr Mountain Poetry 2005), Biographies of Runaway Dogs (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press 2016), No More Quiet Entrances (Luchador Press 2020), and Remnants (Luchador Press 2021).