"House Hunters" by Kevin Prufer

[View this email on a browser]( [Forward to a friend]( [facebook-icon]( [tumblr-icon]( [twitter-icon]( July 25, 2018 [House Hunters]( [Kevin Prufer]( I love the crown molding and the white granite countertops. And look, dear! Stainless steel appliances! Don’t you love them? It’s such a perfect apartment, and, in every room, a coffered ceiling. And don’t you love the pink twin sinks, like porcelain scallops? And listen to the faucets, like the rush of a waterfall heard through thick woods just as the birds began to sing early one morning years ago in the hills outside Florence. Where are you going? Love fills me the way the sun surprises the room when I pull the string and the curtains open. Pinch-pleat curtains, crinkle-voile, semi-opaque, and sheer! Soft as love when I stroke them, warm as love against my cheek, a scent of spring rain gentling the petunias when I wrap myself in them until I cannot see, until I cannot move my arms or legs. Of course, I’d love to see the guest bedroom with its walk-in closet and built-in shoe shelf, its en suite bath with the whirlpool tub! Let me just wipe my eyes on these curtains. Let me just untangle. The view through this window is so lovely, the far fingers of smoke trembling over the distant city where the workers— rich black thoughts pour from the smokestacks is all I have to say about the workers. No, sorry, I’m still here, wrapped in the curtains. They were so alluring, voluptuous, really, if curtains can be voluptuous against bare skin. You continue with the tour, dear, and I’ll be along presently. The sky is rose chiffon, the clouds like pressed flowers above the smokestacks, just leave me here, restrained and lavished at once! And the window, with its inviting coolness to the tongue. To my tongue. It’s like I am licking those smokestacks! [Like this on Facebook]( [Share via Twitter]( Copyright © 2018 Kevin Prufer. Used with permission of the author. [illustration]( About This Poem “A few years ago, I spent a month binge-watching House Hunters on HGTV. This reality show—one of the crassest on TV—follows ‘average’ American couples as they consider buying three different houses. Between houses, HGTV offers commercials for the very products these house hunters admire during the show. After forty or fifty episodes, certain lines began to buzz around my head nearly maniacally—"I love the granite countertops! I'm not a big fan of the outdated refrigerator, though." I started to write those lines down, while also thinking about why the show made me uncomfortable, and why I still could not make myself look away.” —Kevin Prufer Kevin Prufer is the author of How He Loved Them (2018), Churches (2014), and In a Beautiful Country (2011), all published by Four Way Books. He is a professor in the creative writing program at the University of Houston, and cocurator of The Unsung Masters Series, a book series that brings work by long-forgotten writers to new readers. He lives in Houston, Texas. [more-at-poets]( Poetry by Prufer [How He Loved Them]( (Four Way Books, 2018) “Television Prevents Me From Seeing the World As It Really Is” by Carmen Giménez Smith [read-more]( “At the Mall, There’s a Machine That Tells You If You Are Racist” by Karen Skolfield [read-more]( “Prayer on Aladdin’s Lamp” by Marcus Wicker [read-more]( July Guest Editor: Adrian Matejka Thanks to Adrian Matejka, author of Map to the Stars (Penguin Press, 2017), who curated Poem-a-Day this month. Read more about [Matejka]( and our [guest editors for the year.]( Help Support Poem-a-Day If you value Poem-a-Day, please consider a [monthly donation]( or [one-time gift]( to help make it possible. Poem-a-Day is the only digital series publishing new, previously unpublished work by today’s poets each weekday morning. The free series, which also features a curated selection of classic poems on weekends, reaches 450,000+ readers daily. Thank you! [Small-Blue-RGB-poets.org-Logo]( Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit [Poets.org](. You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click [here](. © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038 From Our Sponsors [Advertisement](