mr. blandings builds his dreamhouse

“And I’ve thought
how like your name this house is—
With me outside of it,
And nobody watching.”
--The Veil, Denis Johnson

And I’ve thought, how like Carey Grant’s smile this chair is,
how like the scrub-brush his chesthair grows beneath his smoking jacket,
how like a birdbeak his sharp New York wife clucks,
how like The Money Pit this movie is *(or the other way around—
they’re both laugh-out-loud, ‘How could such a simple change have gone so wrong?!’), how I read this book in the eighth grade because of its James Thurber illustrations,
how like the twin daughters my needs are (Architect: “Surely they don’t each need
a closet and a private bathroom?” Grant: “Surely they do!”),
how like a pot of spilt nails my heart is—
watching interior decorating gone wrong,
like an elongated episode of Trading Spaces
with the hoohaw in sharp black and white. The tragedy is that this was just a film set.
They didn’t really build this house. Didn’t really build anything.
Grant’s no Bob Villa. I’m no wretched concubine in a cummerbund
canoodling around asking where the dishes go. I want a real house.
I want you inside of it.