Poetry
I could always count on winning the Nuyorican Poetry Slam with this poem. I was the second place slam winner of the year of 1991.
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 All Things Are Labor: Stories
by Katherine Arnoldi |
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Photos by
Katherine
Arnoldi
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The Amazing True Story of a Teenage Single Mom by Katherine Arnoldi |
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Photo of
Katherine
Arnoldi ,
New York
City by
Richard
Chase
MY LANDLORD by Katherine Arnoldi
My landlord has taken over
the world. He is collecting all the rent. He is out in the hall.
He has a key to your lock.
He says you got your kitchen, your half-bedroom, your bathroom,
so it adds up to three, to a three bedrooom, check the records,
if your want.
There is a new world order: my landlord. He is renovating China;
he is sorry, but they will have to move out until he is finished.
Russia, he says, is not listed as stabilized. France was not
ever rent controlled. Poland will get the keys when they pay
the deposit.
He went to Brazil and installed new appliances he found on the
street, like stoves with gas leaks and refrigerators without
doors, then he raised their rent. This he does all over the world:
first, second, third, its all the same now. It's all legal, he
says, all on the up and up.
The President came on the TV and said that we have been invaded
by my landlord, not to panic, but keep a list of everything wrong.
Also, to be assured that he is working around the clock and that
they have run a check on the U.S. to see if it had a previous
tenant and it had, one who didn't pay one red cent, he said,
so it is illegal, this exorbitant rent. Then the President spoke
directly to my landlord, "Get out now, or the American people
will kick your butt."
"Like I'm shaking in my boots," my landlord says. He
has made it his business to know each and every one of his tenants
personally. He knows what makes them tick, their ins and outs.
"I can make a rat pay rent," my landlord says, "Including
that one," and he turns the President off, checks to see
if he has ever made a late payment, if he is behind.
The President is way behind. He will be evicted. Unless he does
what my landlord says, he will be on the street. There is a new
world order, my landlord.
He says he is putting all the world's trash in our backyard.
He hates to throw anything out.
He says he fixed my stove; it works now.
He says my toilet is not stopped up.
He says it is not Antarctica in my apartment. He says it is the
Sahara, I must be crazy. Feel this, he says, this radiator is
red hot.
That leak upstairs is not a leak. The people up there are worse
than stupid, he says, no matter how many times he tells them,
they do not know how to take a shower right.
He set up free trade with Columbia,
Thailand, and Jamaica through our storefront. Such nice boys,
he says to have so many friends, to sell candy in this neighborhood,
to pay so much rent, not to mention the deposit.
A few countries can not pay rent. He turns a drip into a flood,
a spark into a fire. He is insured.
He can afford to wait.
He says what happened in East Timor is none of my business. He
says Haiti is no place for me to worry about. He said for me
to forget about Somolia, that those people are going to be very
sorry for what they did. He said Miramar was on rent strike and
sooner or later they're going to lose their whole building. He
says if I don't like what he did in Afganistan then why don't
I just move out. He says he can do whatever he wants in Iraq.
What are you going to do about it, he says. While you were watching
TV, he says, he was working.
He can turn a desert into a storm. He can kill a hundred thousand
and not even get a nick. There's plenty more where he came from,
he says.
He is here for the long run. He knows you will cooperate. He
is your new best friend, he says. He is all you got. He is living
two floors down. He is spending your rent at OTB. He is absentee,
but you are at home and you have begun to feel at home. You have
begun to like it. You hear a knock on your door. He says you
will do what he says. He is the new world order. Everything has
changed overnight. Everything was rearranged while you were at
work, while you were sleeping, while you were away for the summer,
while you were not paying attention. He says he has thought of
everything. He says he has worked it out so you don't have a
choice, so you don't have to think about it. He will take care
of everything. You don't have to lift a finger. He says you will
call him lord. You will call this land. He says you will call
him the landlord.
My landlord says that that crime was not a crime. He says there
is no reason for the courts, for all the runaround. There is
no reason for fairness. He says that was no crime, that was an
act of war. He says everything is falling into place, just the
way he likes it.
But we have begun to go behi
nd my landlord's back. We have
had meetings. We have taken a white sheet and written on it.
Tommorrow we will unfurl it outside of the building, on the fire
escape. The sign says rent strike. The sign says we will no longer
pay for the storms in the deserts, the battles of the ships,
the wars of the stars, the assualts of the land and air and sea.
It says the days of the lords of the land are over, the days
of the lording over, or being lorded over.
We have decided not to call this land, our land, to go parading
with fists raised. There will be no surveys, no inspections,
no owner, no lords, no deeds and leases and sublets, no rights
of domicile, borders and demarcations, no evictions, no managing
agents, no mine, mine, mine. No more of wolves wearing wool,
no more dominions, no one taking over any world, no more days
of the tooth and tooths and eyes and eyes.
Instead we are looking for logs and finding them. This rent strike
will have to be extended. We will have to move out some furniture,
make the rooms empty, and see what we see, to look and look,
and then, do what there is for us to do.
-------Katherine Arnoldi
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