All Text, Music, and Illustrations, including Paintings, Photographs, and 3D models, Copyright © 2022 by Jim Robbins.
MANAGING
Daybreak. The old woman screams and moans.
From the room right above hers, pained,
ecstatic groans drift through an open door.
You want me to tell them to shut their traps?
____________________________________________
Workers come all day
to fix perverse parts.
Pipes knock, dripping
flop sweat; stoves
pop and smoke; carpets rot
from endless spills and shuffling:
Nothing is exempt. The tenants
demand that the piths
be replaced, the rooms
at evening
holding their breath
as I carefully
lock money
in the essential
metal desk.
____________________________________________
I knocked off, hands
roughened with plaster.
Crayons had captured the outline
of light cast from signs outside,
tropes of capital penetrating
the window for hours, as smells
saturated the sink again,
the toilet leaked, the systems
of residuum moaned, each smell
and sound finally recognizable.
The coolest guy left
a butcher knife and gaping
holes in the bedroom walls.
His wife had taken everything
but the mattress, wilting sheets,
and crayons. The family
had danced at the window,
not caring who watched,
while colors emerged
in fragments, the names
quickly filling and emptying.
I've restored the plaster
for other names, clocks, faces,
the past still stinking
and groaning in things.
The glass untouched.
The street a stain
of violet bile--
the light falling
softly
on the walls.
With white hands, I surrender
to the mattress on the floor.
Crayons and plaster darken
on the bewildered carpet.
______________________________________________
They leave what can't be carried
and more: cushionless
couches, with wounds
like mouths from which faint
odors rise; sad toilet soups;
and the tiny survivors--
ants, cockroaches, thriving
on the stench, crawling
through every crevice,
following the command to pillage
whatever's left, the shoe dark
as a theater, the bottles
translucent spires. Recently
I've found an old man's handkerchief
(he now has less weight
than his book of ancestry);
a stained sheet (the flag
of dominion); and a sticky knife
covered with crumbs.
I've dismantled a palatial estate
built with popsicle sticks
and dried chicken bones,
decorated with bright foil
from small luxuries,
and I've trashed a shrine
with wildflowers, the dried petals
mingling with bug legs
on the windowsill. All morning
I've dumped cast-offs, all morning
cleaning and emptying, until bare,
the rooms finally gleam,
good enough for others.
______________________________________________
Last week I discovered a hanging plant
in the pool, the surface ripples
slightly perturbing the wire hook,
a sign of something, I suppose.
Copies of keys to every room
hang on the board above my desk,
which makes me think
that I should know. One day
I gave the copy of a key
to a tenant before I could see
the butcher knife cupped
in his hand, the blade resting
along the inside of his arm. I
twiddled my thumbs until a stranger
leapt, screaming and naked, down
the stairs, before I called
the cops. The same day, checking
the circuit breakers in back,
I surprised a tenant's boyfriend
loading rifles into a van
and said nothing. The next day, cops
moved in, a detective plopping
his notepad on my desk before
phoning in the description
of a tenant: Fu Manchu mustache,
ponytail, no chin, the perfect
account of a burglary suspect.
I had to call the cops again
after I found the stranger floating
face down in the pool, the water
cloudy with blood. I feel like no one
ever totally cleaned that up.
______________________________________________
A year after the new owner
raised the rent thirty percent,
a de facto eviction of us all,
I still remember them,
even though I didn't know them--
the one I sheltered from an abusive
boyfriend, the one I threw a few bucks,
the tenants to whom I served
a three-day notice, and the ones
who just kept bugging me
to fix one damn thing or another--
the fingerprints on glass, slivers
in the carpet, holes in the walls
remaining long after they'd left;
no matter how hard I cleaned,
something remained--they
were worse than ghosts, more
timeless than ooze or earth.
Besides that, I remember
only the waiting, day after day,
for another knock, and dreaming
of hidden passageways linking
rooms I've never seen, where
tenants lead secret lives
too wonderful to brag about,
the eternal appearing in dirty
windows when I wasn't
looking, the veil of exhausted
surfaces lifted. Heaven
filled the rooms with wholeness
while I dozed--waking always
to blank walls--
and I'll never forget
ever
that small sign on the front door
which showed them
where to find me.
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