City of Coughing and Dead Radiators
I cannot evict them from my insomniac nights, tenants in the city of coughing and dead radiators. They bang the radiators like cold hollow mirimbas; they cry out to unseen creatures skittering across their feet in darkness; they fold hands over plates to protect food from ceilings black with roaches. And they answer the call of the list, all evictions in court, brays the clerk. Quiet and dutiful as special troops returning, they file into the courtroom, crowding the gallery: the patient one from El Salvador, shoemakers' union refugee, slapping his neck to show where that vampire of an army bullet pierced his uncle's windpipe; the red-haired woman with no electricity but for the drug's heat swimming in the pools of her blue bruises, white-skinned as the candles to leave a loud-faced man trumpets from the gallery Death to Legal Aid. |