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# One Poem by Fady Joudah
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/one-poem-by-fady-joudah/
- Published: 2018-03-07T11:55:13.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:25:25.000Z
- Description: Our poetry editor, Wendy Xu, has selected one poem by Fady Joudah for her monthly series that brings original poetry to the screens of Hyperallergic readers.
- Author: Wendy Xu
- Tags: Poetry, Hyperallergic Poetry, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-18 14:37 (2018)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2018/03/vc_16_untitled-ocean-mezzotint.jpg)

Vija Celmins, “Untitled (Ocean Mezzotint)” (2016), mezzotint on Hahnemuhle paper; paper size: 21 1/2 x 19 inches; image size: 10 1/2 x 12 1/2 inches, edition of 40 (image courtesy Senior & Shopmaker Gallery, NY)

## Sheetrock, Paint, Studs

A child of Poseidon, the rain entered our home  
from the sea. We sat on the carpeted  
staircase, watched our youth dislocate  
six times in all. In those days  
fire and Aries sent their progeny our way,  
but with dry thunder  
and bloodshot lightning, our childhood  
wasn’t insured. It endured  
in damaged dwelling. A damaged dwelling  
can’t be remodeled whole. As grownups,  
our resale value tripled that  
of our parents. For decades we reveled  
in pecuniary bliss until the flood,  
and now we grew mold inside, termites  
were after our kingdom.  
Fecund mercenaries, dressed as empathetic clowns,  
would have us, the survivors, fund the funders.  
In this, we were the same as our parents.  
Their contents worksheet read as follows:  
All was lost, none forgotten.  
Depreciation, priceless.  
For everything else, philanthropy.  
The science of it is another deity’s narrative.  
It was all concrete in the city  
and where is water to go?  
Poor water, its agency partially stripped,  
came across as mean. Wood pops  
and floats, drifts and buckles,  
swells like human legs whose hearts have failed.  
Physics explains expansion after settlement  
and the settlement of expansion.  
Our deductible was low.  
We were manmade and natural. We flew  
gods in to arbitrate our fate. The rain  
had risen from the sea to gentrify us, grass,  
Aspergillus fumigatus, and all sorts of weed.  
Our lungs, caked with cement dust,  
our demolition commenced,  
friends with crowbars, hammers,  
electric saws, measuring tape, fans,  
dehumidifiers, we ripped the floors,  
fileted the walls, goodbye sink  
and countertop, goodbye cabinet  
over the sink. Goodbye mattress,  
pantry, and maple over the roof. Goodbye  
polar bear and goodbye moon  
through the window,  
but the driveway and front doorstep  
were steadfast for a country  
with a budget to balance. A low glass  
ceiling our lips, noses, palms,  
nipples, navels, and iliac crests  
pressed against. And what stone  
amid the debris turned. The detritus  
was mostly next door, neighborly, Caribbean,  
the power outage, powered  
cholera, chlorinated pool and powder room.  
We totaled our cars, interviewed the bidders.  
We rolled our years then smoked our years.  
And in the drying, we forgot our colors.  
If white came first,  
if red. If red  
stole the brain’s flow  
until stars appeared  
portals for blue.

\* \* \*

Fady Joudah’s fourth poetry collection, [*Footnotes in the Order of Disappearance*](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1571315012/?tag=hyperallergic-20&ref=hyperallergic.com), is now available from Milkweed Editions. He was a recipient of the Yale Series for Younger Poets prize, a Griffin Poetry Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, among others.