Fixing

by Purbasha Roy

Meandering through

a trash-blown forty acres,

overgrown until all the neighbors

have come to think of it as our private

deer preserve—one morning appear

the muddy bulldozer scrapings

of a new street. Within days concrete

curb-forms sprout; utility

boxes; four foundation holes;

the brown, sandy heaps trucked near

for engineered septic. Late into evenings,

so late in the year, muttering generators

illuminate roughed-in frames

with the phosphorus-white light of star

shells. Sporadic nail-gun salvos clatter

A carbide auger bit pounds as if dropped

from a siege tower, to core a path

for the well-point, the submersible

pump. First drinks and baths, loads

of laundry drawn forth from seeping clay

and shale gush over scarred topsoil

that should be already frozen.

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Purshaba Roy is a writer from Jharkhand, India. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Denver Quarterly Review, SAND, Iron Horse Literary Review, The Margins as of late. Attained 2nd Position in 8th Singapore Poetry Contest. Best of the Net Nominee. Website: https://linktr.ee/Purbashawrites

"Fixing" is her first appearance in The Itch.