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Recorded Reading: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/vjr35po68v7gm3soggtg9/New-Roomie.wav?rlkey=us1lg19dvq8bakkttdplc0bzx&dl=0

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(As a newly homeless person, this poet had exactly the same attitude as did the roommate described below years later.

“How can these people look so hopeless?” she thought to herself, “Look at all these programs!”

Having an extensive secretarial background and eager to rebuild her life, she got out her pen and pad, and proceeded to check every one of them out.

As you can see, she is still chronically homeless.

What she found in those programs will make interesting ~ though disillusioning ~ reading later in this same “Low Rent Lifestyle” series.)

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New Roomie

He said:
This place is total trash.

I said what he was too polite to say:
Total white trash, that’s right

He said:
I can’t even stay till the end of the month
I find other places to be
There hasn’t been one day
Without drama since I’ve been here
This place is toxic
I’ve been working extra
To get on up out of here

He said:
You should too

I said:
I’ve been doing this
For ten years and longer
I can’t work extra
I can’t meet a work schedule at all

At this social level
This is what is available
This and thousands of others
Just like it

Lucky if you can make it work for two months

I’ve moved so often
Social Security doesn’t believe me anymore

He said:
You need to lose that defeatest attitude
You’re a woman
You’re a senior citizen
There are programs
There’s hope

I said:
You don’t know me well enough
To know how thoroughly
I’ve checked all that out?
You don’t think I check it out again
Every day?

I didn’t have time to say:

How would you feel right now
If I said there are programs
For Black people too?

You are a victim
Of a system
Designed to bring you
The illusion
Of those programs

(I don’t have time to write here:
All the ways in which they fail
A poet)

He said
Exactly the same things he’d said before

I wished him well
And closed my door

Since
At the moment
I had one to close

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