Poetry #185 Winter 2016-2017 — Art, Culture, and Community Development

Poem: “Tires Stacked in the Hallways of Civilization”

Yes, Your Honor, there are rodents, said the landlord to the judge, but I let the tenant have a cat. Besides, he stacks his tires in the hallway.

Photo by Felix E. Guerrero, via flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0

Yes, Your Honor, there are rodents,
said the landlord to the judge,
but I let the tenant
have a cat. Besides,
he stacks his tires
in the hallway.

The tenant confessed
in stuttering English:
Yes, Your Honor,
I am from El Salvador,
and I put my tires
in the hallway.

The judge puffed up
his robes
like a black bird
shaking off rain:
Tires out of the hallway!
You don’t live in a jungle
anymore. This
is a civilized country.

So the defendant was ordered
to remove his tires
from the hallways of civilization,
and allowed to keep the cat.

About the Author

Martin Espada

Martin Espada has published almost 20 books as a poet, editor, essayist, and translator. A former tenant lawyer in Greater Boston’s Latino community, Espada is a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

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ISSUE TABLE OF CONTENTS

  • A Resource for Well-Meaning Landlords

    • Roger Markovics

    January 11, 2017

    When I picked up Peter Shapiro’s book, The Good Landlord: A Guide to Making a Profit While Making a Difference, my first thought was, “What happens when you can’t do both, or have to choose one over the other?”

  • Bringing Together Arts and Community Development

    • Miriam Axel-Lute

    January 11, 2017

    Who has been behind the large increase in financial support for and attention to what has been termed "creative placemaking" over the past couple years, and why?

  • A woman tells her story about life in Little Tokyo while someone holds an old photo of her and her coworkers.

    Preserving the Character of Little Tokyo

    • Amy Evans

    January 11, 2017

    In the wake of rapid gentrification, an organization in Los Angeles leverages the arts to celebrate a community's rich heritage and keep social equity as a priority. But what is the core character of Little Tokyo?