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Upon Hearing Your Building is up for Sale by Gabriel Cortez
By Jim HendrickPosted: 04/30/2025
Upon Hearing Your Building is up for Sale
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Gabriel Cortez
Notes from an open house
It’s hard not to cheer for the brother
that claims he bought weed
from Ta-Nehisi Coates at Howard
or the hairdresser that compliments your fade
then asks about the plastic step by the toilet,
making you the first to introduce her to the phrase,
“Squatty Potty.”
It’s hard not to wish them luck,
the Black buyers, when your landlord
puts the building up for sale.
Today, 30 strangers shuffle through
your ground floor, north-facing apartment,
each wearing a different shade of “
“I’m sorry to disturb you” is followed by
“Thank you for opening your home.”
As if we owned the lock, the key, the hinges.
“Landlord” is a 15th-century word
so feudalism never ended,
it just put on a surgical mask,
learned to take its shoes off at the door.
A man taps the walls with his knuckles,
searching for rot. It is polite
when he points to the paint bubbling beneath the window
and shares the diagnosis: “water damage.”
You don’t know which embarrassments
are yours and which to give back
by the end of the month.
Someone asks, “How’s the neighborhood?”
And you wonder how to protect
what you are only borrowing.
This small sliver of Oakland,
where the children ask you your favorite animal
and the animal becomes your name.
Where a brother plays soul music
from his window, and that’s how Sam Cooke
ended up at your wedding.
Maybe it’s the L.A. in you,
Los Angeles, where your people
owned nothing but the Fatburger between your fingers,
not even the contested colors of your block,
that inspires you to start banging on each new stranger
parading through your home, demanding to know,
“Where you from?”
And even though
you are not from here or there either,
you keep a quiet tally of their responses.
So quiet, by your window, you can hear the realtor
discussing with a man that was just inside your kitchen
why the rent is so low for the area.
And it’s not. But you know the sound of a hungry dog
or the scent of an oilman determined to drill when he says,
“You’ll get my offer by the end of the month.”
😊😊😁🤔🤔😎😉😉 This poem was read by Sally Asmundson at A Poetry Gathering on 4/30/2025