42nd And Telegraph - Noaa Rienecker
Momma with her little boy
who points at the public notice on the wall
patiently elucidates
“They’re going to tear this place
down, honey, and build
new apartments for people to live in.”
I’m closing an adjacent gate
in between tasks
and I assume I’m seeing an opportunity to commiserate.
“Just what we need”,
I say, icy.
“More goddamn condos.”
She looks hurt
and takes her child by the hand
leaving me a sharp retort -
“I live in a condo.”
adding,
“I don’t think more housing is a bad thing.”
I have to stand there
for a minute or two
at first feeling a little ashamed
at hurting someone’s feelings
throwing my opinion around rashly,
too accustomed to my hippies and freaks
echoing me like a church choir.
But when I walk down 42nd street,
passing under the freeway
stepping over broken tents and broken bottles,
cardboard shelters,
human excrement,
needles on the ground…
Not fifty feet from a picket fence
and a central heating system
is a decrepit Buick,
windshield shrouded
by a blanket from the inside
tarp draped overhead
to cover the windows…
Not one block from a yoga studio,
the playground of the affluent,
the church of the liberal,
which will soon be dismantled
and replaced by more homogenous
angular corrugated dreck,
not one block away is
utter destitution,
total desperation.
So who’s to live in
“more housing”?
Those who can afford it.
Those referred to with such
vitriol as can be felt
in the tags and stickers
dressing bathroom walls and stop signs
all over this town,
“QUEERS HATE TECHIES”.
They aren’t the ones that need housing.
At least the yoga studio had personality,
have scholarships,
hosted locals.
Now, once again,
homogeny will trump personality,
money will usurp vitality.
In less than the space of a mile
driving down Telegraph,
a friend who owns a business
points out three or four spaces
scheduled for demolition.
I don’t know how
to tell that woman
I have nothing against her.
How to explain
that I see a city
being slowly drained of blood,
all my favorite corners
filled with price tags and gentry,
generations made as aliens
in their own home.
Even if I said exactly that
I don’t know if the landlord would hear me
over the rattle of coins.
So I go about my tasks
and an hour later,
as I see Momma and her little boy
walking back down the street,
completing an afternoon’s circuit,
I smile,
and tip my hat,
and feel a little sad.
