Door Town
All the moms yelled
DON’T SLAM THE DOOR!
and then like recording
added some more:
I JUST SCRUBBED!
WIPE YOUR FEET!
You knew you were home
when you heard words so sweet.
But one house was different
in our little town,
where lived the redoubtable
Grandma Upside-Down.
She never shouted
such maternal commands
because she meandered
around on her hands.
She never yelled out
about anyone’s feet,
but she’d yell COME ON IN
which was heard down the street.
In her upside-downness
she’d always demand
SLAM IT, DAMMIT!
and stomp her hand.
The floor was her ceiling,
the ceiling the floor,
so it made perfect sense
for her upside-down door.
We’d have to get down
on the ground for her greeting,
forehead-to-forehead
in ground-level meeting;
it took quite a while
when she first moved in
to know as we stood there
she spoke to a shin.
And in the meanwhile
reverberation
of her upside-down clarion
door declamation,
and soon the whole town
performed on the doors
the 1812 Overture
with many encores.
Tourists would come,
to say that they’d heard
a door-slamming town,
and thus spread the word.
We learned it from Grandma,
then we amplified:
SLAM IT! and DAMMIT!
in chorus we cried.
And brick by red brick
came down in a crumble
because of the slamming
that made the walls tumble.
Our property value
might not be so good,
and earplugs are common
in our neighborhood,
but we’re ever progressive,
avant-garde, you might say:
with our very own influencer
to show us the way.
With thanks to Deborah for the photo,
submitted to Dan Antion’s
Oddments 