On The Houses
By Alysse Kathleen McCanna
Hello listeners, I’m Alysse Kathleen McCanna, here today for Poets on the Plains. I’m so happy to be your Colorado host for season three.
Let me tell you a little bit about me: I’m the author of FishWife, winner of the 2025 Colorado Book Award in poetry. My poetry has appeared in North American Review, The Rumpus, Poet Lore, TriQuarterly, and other journals. I’ve been lucky to have my work supported by the Wurlitzer Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, the Tucson Festival of Books, and Sundress Academy for the Arts, among others. I hold a PhD in English from Oklahoma State University, an MFA from Bennington College, and am an Associate Professor of English at Colorado Mountain College in the Vail Valley.
As you can tell from this short bio, I’ve bounced around the country quite a bit. I grew up in the frozen tundra of Wisconsin, went to the east coast for college, and then ended up in southern Colorado for a decade. Graduate school took me to Oklahoma, and then love took me to Massachusetts and even New Jersey. At long last, I was able to return to Colorado, the state I’m so happy to claim again as home. And while I love living in the mountains, I’ll always have a soft spot for the plains.
I’m thrilled to be sharing a poem of mine with you today. It’s called “The Houses.”
To me, “The Houses” is a very Colorado poem; there's dogs, hot peppers, and the summits of fourteeners. Much like the speaker in the rest of FishWife, this poem begins in Colorado and ends in love. If this sounds familiar to what I’ve just shared about my background, that’s because it is. And maybe that’s why this poem is a favorite of mine–because it’s a little piece of my history and my heart. This poem traverses a variety of landscapes as the speaker discovers what’s necessary to sacrifice for survival, but also what remains: the solidity of houses and the promise of stories.
THE HOUSES
You climb the mountain of the stairs, a fourteener.
Onward, through the light dusting of yellow Labrador hair,
through the rising pepper mists of the gas stove.
It’s like hiking up Pikes Peak, looking backwards
into the Colorado you loved and left. Summers
of summits. High plains with sudden sand dunes,
the color of the house you lost in the divorce.
Then, your own blue place, before the moldy-grey.
Before the shifting moth-pink. Years later in another state
you find the yellow house, with red brick, a dense
fenced backyard and a burning bush of birds
you love so hard another person comes to help you
count the flowers. Now your house is a hundred years old
with a flagstone path, a lone daffodil. The high windows peer
over a horizon of greening lawns, long leftover holiday lights.
Your bookshelves propagate, stacks and stacks of paper
full of stories that used to be trees, and the four-poster bed
of your childhood becomes the cove where you and your love
roll oceanic over all the bodies and sheets that came before.
Lucky you, a life of houses, folded one into another
like an intricate dessert. Your tooth aches.
You lick the spoon.
Used with permission
This is the very last poem in FishWife, and I find it especially satisfying–after roaming unmoored for most of the collection, the speaker is finally on solid ground, with a safe and pleasurable structure around her, with someone who loves birds and flowers beside her. She can finally count herself lucky, can take stock of where she’s been, can marvel in the bliss of the present moment, and, ultimately, can reflect in that space of safety that comes with distance. She can take a deep breath, recline on a bed of memory and possibility, and lick the dessert spoon clean.
I’ve always been the kind of reader who flips to the final page first, just to get a taste of what’s to come. I don’t read thoroughly or for spoilers but knowing there’s an end and getting a sense of where I’ll arrive, helps me to sit back and enjoy the ride. There are always plenty of surprises along the way, and I’ll usually forget what that final page or line contained by the time I get there. Mostly, I find that the last poem in a book can be a sort of compass, pointing the reader in the direction of a harbor or a shore–a safe, satisfying place to land.
I hope for you to arrive safely home today, wherever that might be, to enjoy the company of someone you love, and to eat something sweet.
Thank you for listening to Poets on the Plains. I’m Alysse Kathleen McCanna, coming to you from Eagle, Colorado.
POETS ON THE PLAINS HOST
Alysse Kathleen McCanna is the author of FishWife (Black Lawrence Press), winner of the 2025 Colorado Book Award in poetry. Her poetry has appeared in North American Review, The Rumpus, Poet Lore, TriQuarterly, and other journals. Her work has been supported by the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, Tucson Festival of Books, New York State Summer Writers Institute, and Sundress Academy for the Arts. She holds a PhD in English from Oklahoma State University, an MFA from Bennington College, and is an Associate Professor of English at Colorado Mountain College in the Vail Valley.She and her husband spend most of their time tending to our animal menagerie, keeping houseplants alive, and exploring the BLM trails near our home.https://www.alyssemccanna.com/
