Yard
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They always told us that one day we would move into a house, a real house that would be ours for always so we wouldn’t have to move each year. And our house would have running water and pipes that worked. And inside it would have real stairs, not hallway stairs, but stairs inside like the houses on T.V. And we’d have a basement and at least three washrooms so when we took a bath we wouldn’t have to tell everybody. Our house would be white with trees around it, a great big yard and grass growing without a fence. This was the house Papa talked about when he held a lottery ticket and this was the house Mama dreamed up in the stories she told us before we went to bed. But the house on Mango Street is not the way they told it at all.
—Sandra Cisneros
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Poem: For the Chipmunk in My Yard
Poem: Ode to Twelve Yards of Unscreened Fill Dirt
Poem: Lupines in a Yard in San Antonio, Texas
Poem: I was washing at night out in the yard
Poem: a song in the front yard
The whimsy and heartbreak of America’s yard sales
Why leaves turn color in the fall
Dog In Purse Stares Longingly At Dog In Yard