#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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