This is Poetry Moment on WPSU – a weekly program featuring the work of contemporary Pennsylvania poets. Your host is poet and author Marjorie Maddox, a 2023 Monson Arts Fellow, author of more than 20 books, and Professor Emerita of English and Creative Writing at the Lock Haven campus of Commonwealth University.
Welcome to Poetry Moment. I’m Marjorie Maddox
Yesterday was Mother’s Day. Perhaps you visited your mother at her home. However, if you have grieved the loss of a parent or of a childhood home, you may find your experiences mirrored in today’s poem.
Selling your childhood home can be overwhelming, filled with grief or hope. In today’s poem, “Selling Your Mother’s House,” Robert Walicki acknowledges the past while he embraces potential new owners.
Robert Walicki comes from a rich tradition of working-class poets. He has worked in construction and as a plumber in Pittsburgh. A two-time Pushcart and a Best of The Net nominee, Robert's previous poetry collections are Black Angels from Six Gallery Press (2019) and Fountain from Main Street Rag Press (2019). His latest collection is Watershed (2025) from Broadstone Books.
The houses we’ve lived in, particularly in childhood, brim with memories. If a parent has grown old in the same house, reminders of their aging may appear in each room. It is hard to imagine—within the same four walls—a new family making the house into a home. Yet, in today’s poem, Robert Walicki does just that. Both in life and in poetry, he has a knack for fixing things.
Here’s “How to Sell Your Mother’s House” by Robert Walicki.
How to Sell Your Mother's House
Begin by tearing out the carpeting
with her walker's drag marks, the rust spots
from her hospital bed. Remember,
everything here is fixable.
Pet stains on the hardwood, windows
thinner than air that leach in dirty sunlight,
the ice of every Christmas without your father.
There's still potential. Look beyond the dying pines
in the backyard. Dead limbs only let in more sun.
And pay no attention to the deer that roam aimlessly
in dry grass, the unmowed yard, the stalks of tall weeds
you’d never consider eating, are sustenance.
There's space over here for a stove and Sunday mornings,
with burnt toast and yellow washes of eggs over plates,
back when the windows still opened
and let years of summers pour in like lost memory.
Here's the garage with its grease drops from beater cars,
the spot where your father's Cadillac sat gleaming like a cruise ship,
seats like velvet mountains where you sat,
imagining highway was ocean.
Here's the porch where you stared at the scar on his leg
after the last heart attack, that fourth of July you watched the sky
explode into sparks above the pines.
Today you listed it online. 3 bedrooms, one bath,
good starter with potential. Some updates. You can make it what you want.
Previously published in Fountain (Main Street Rag, 2019)
That was “How to Sell Your Mother’s House” by Robert Walicki. I’m Marjorie Maddox with this season’s final episode of Poetry Moment. Thanks for listening.
Listen for Poetry Moment with Marjorie Maddox, Mondays during Morning Edition and All Things Considered on WPSU. You can view more episodes at wpsu.org/poetrymoment.
Our theme music is by Eric Ian Farmer.
