Two Brown Doors
Two brown doors side-by-side to apartments #4 and #6 upstairs where light is like a petulant child.
Through the first one we carried out an old woman who screamed she had been attacked by a gizzard
in her macoute sack. On the other, the gash in the upper right corner marked the night Orson Thomas was denied
love by the pole-dancer from the Body-Shop. I get no back-story from other tenants whose dead-bolts lock out
disturbing noise. Something important happened here, I think, knowing also I will shelve the hallway video when chatter
turns to the opening of the Bruegel exhibit next week where hundreds will gather to view fallen angels blowing
horns, sharks devouring butterflies, a bloated universe coming apart in breathtaking blue and rust and pure white.
Make an Appointment
will quarantine us or substitute teachers will provide stories that exclude black children. We have rules,
a Diversity policy, a No Solicitations policy, and we throw all junk mail in our city waste containers
(the blue ones). But don’t waylay me claiming a few porno flyers or Guns Rights ads got through. I’m here
often, but like an unsubstantial idea I’m not always accessible. Sometimes I’ve already left when you see me.
Landlord, Landlord
“Ten Bucks you say I owe you? Ten Bucks you say is due? Well, that’s Ten Bucks more’n I’ll pay you Till you fix this house up new.” Ballad of the Landlord Langston Hughes
Let’s say I own eight apartments in another world, in, say, one of two places: back in the day of the Aquitaine’s
where I partitioned my land for knights who did my bidding who divided that land for serfs who did their bidding. Or,
I owned property in the cerulean sky next to the main entrance of a sport’s heaven where soccer was still the universal game.
I was the landlord and my job was maintenance. I collected no rent. My main task in those worlds was to mediate a sense
of loss of self that accompanied an allegiance to an overlord or a last second goal that disrupted an angel’s vision of perpetual
joy. I soothed, commiserated, empathized. I was admired. I loved my job. But screams from a second floor apartment
suddenly remind me that I’ve owned this piece of land for over three decades and stacked in a closet are histories of lives passing
through like beams of light covered by a raincoat. I wonder why I have hung on so long, why they come, why they say they
are not free while here. I understand. I am not a Langston Hughes’ landlord, but each month I squeeze a rent check from the hand
that closed an old woman’s eyes or held back a husband’s fist. Give it back, you say. Make your land a cooperative, a common
space with dividends for residents. Share the revenue, or else— the revolution is coming. Maybe I should be a groundskeeper.
For a moment I’m with knights and angels. For a moment I let time and Ten Bucks have their way.
They Came to the Party
Third Page of Apartment Lease--Departures
Phillip Raisor is a mixed bag—ex-jock, factory worker, landlord, scholar, and the author of eight books of poetry, nonfiction, and criticism. His work has appeared in such journals as The Southern Review, The Sewanee Review, Prairie Schooner, The Writer’s Chronicle, Studies in English Literature, and Contemporary Literature. In his teen years, he played on the losing team in the state championship game in Indiana that inspired Hoosiers, and was a freshman on the team with Wilt Chamberlain that lost a national championship in triple-overtime. Raisor received his B.A and M.A from Louisiana State University and a Ph.D. from Kent State. He taught at various universities and is now professor emeritus of English at Old Dominion University, where he initiated the creative writing program, a visiting writer’s series, and the annual literary festival.