House of Glass, 1872
By Thad DeVassie
Mathew Brady hinged together a home on a hill forged from his glass plates, his medal-less and less-than Great Exhibition. Arranging them just so, he and his beloved Juliet relived a history his government no longer wanted.
“Will you look at him, honey, always up to the task,” he would say to his wife, as Lincoln, like an already risen Christ, descended the kitchen cupboards to the earth below with each new sunrise.
By midday, Mathew would lounge on his jade sofa awaiting a disheveled Whitman to pull up a seat, as Juliet rocked with Clemens on the veranda, watching ironclads and sternwheelers navigate their space.
All of it, predictable, right down to the harvest moon that splayed a darkened, underdeveloped Poe on the cellar doors.
Presidents, Generals, even Barnum, all marched and paraded throughout their quarters without the pains of small talk.
Then, downhill and uninvited, Juliet spied a young Georgie Eastman who had fixed his gaze upward – “is that a stone in his hand?” she questioned – as he vowed to shatter the whole damn thing.
Thad DeVassie’s work has appeared in numerous publications, including New York Quarterly, Poetry East, West Branch, Juked, Collateral, Unbroken, Lunate, PANK, Ghost City Review, and Barely South. His chapbook, THIS SIDE OF UTOPIA is forthcoming from Cervena Barva Press. A lifelong Ohioan, he writes from the outskirts of Columbus. Find him on social networks @thaddevassie.