Vacant Possession – Janet Frame

December is Janet Frame Month

Vacant Possession – Janet Frame

All day on the phone. All day
desperate for vacant possession,
ringing to find if the furniture has gone
have I move it yet; if not why?

How can I explain
that my dead mother’s best bedroom and fireside suite
have first claim, that their obstinate
will is to remain. Proud beasts they sand.
Nothing will shift them out
but the voice my mother used when she spoke to her
companionable furniture.

Now her voice is gone and the house is sold and I do not know
the command that persuades a well-loved fireside suite
meekly to rise up on its casters and go!



I found these poems in an old poetry anthology from school. Unfortunately there isn't a reference for where they originally came from.