Spread across ten sections denoted by Roman numerals, "The House" is a reflection upon the ways in which women respond to and compartmentalize abuse, memory, and love. Shire begins the first section by remembering how her mother once compared women to houses, with "locked rooms inside," such as "kitchen[s] of lust" and "bedroom[s] of grief." Her mother continued to say that "sometimes the men - they come with keys, / and sometimes, the men - they come with hammers."
In the second section, Shire uses the first person and directly positions herself, or her speaker, within the poem. She speaks of her body, and the violence directed towards her. When she writes, "I said No and he did not listen," she suggests that she too is the victim of abuse. In section vii the speaker recounts an interaction with an unidentified figure in which she is asked to indicated "on the doll where [she] was touched," further indicating that the speaker is a survivor of abuse. The speaker hypothesizes ways in which this abuse could be countered. In section iii, she references castration, or as Shire puts it a "neat procedure." Furthermore, in section v she writes of her father, "who is lying on the dining room table, / his mouth stuffed with a red apple," as though he's been gagged, or indeed roasted like a pig. In the ninth section, she speaks of a "silly boy, chained to the / basement." Just as Shire presents the female character who has been damaged by abuse, she also presents a strong and resilient character who aims to fight back and who fantasizes about revenge.
Shire continues the house metaphor throughout the entirety of the poem. The metaphor allows for several interpretations, beyond the immediate association of the domestic space with females. By comparing a woman to a house full of rooms, Shire suggests that one response to abuse is to compartmentalize the trauma. In order to keep the kitchen functioning, everything is pushed into the bathroom. In order to sleep at night, everything is again moved from the bedroom to the laundry room. Through the house metaphor, Shire also plays upon traditional conceptions of the home. Whereas often domestic space is portrayed as a place of safety, refuge and comfort, Shire also opines that it can be a place where pain is experienced and stored.
In the final two sections, Shire writes of jokes that are not intended to be funny. In section ix, she recites a knock-knock joke to which the punchline is that "no one" is home. In the final section she writes "this is where love comes to die. Welcome, come in, make yourself / at home." Both jokes play upon the running house metaphor, and further delve into the ways in which pain is processed and approached. Humor can be seen as a coping mechanism, yet Shire sees no cure in laughing. Her personal turmoil is of a foundational, structural nature, and no amount of surface renovation will repair the damage.
