It Feels Like Discrimination | Alyme Almendarez

“Even though we may not be citizens nor residents of the U.S., we have a number of rights that no entity nor government agency can violate. Furthermore, we have legal rights in terms of our housing.”
—Resource Center of the Americas

Fifty miles south of here
there is a family—representing many—
that has become displaced and misplaced and is seeking a place
in society
where there is none
to speak of.

And the paper says it’s okay
to raze low-cost housing.
It’s okay to evict families from downtown.

We need more business!
Too many vacant store fronts
looks bad.
And anyway we need
“a city where people live not just sleep.”

We need curfews and per-unit limits
to monitor too many people doing too many things
in very small spaces.
It’s overcrowded in our city of 2,820.
Seneca food plant can’t feed us all.

But the Nunez family knows
there is no place like home when there is no home.
And a tornado of witches wearing business suits
is sweeping the streets clean.

It is better to go somewhere else.
Nowhere is better—
under bridges like Franklin frogs.
There are not enough half-way houses
to accept half-way families.

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The Homeless Shuffle | Bruce Ario

Zippity-do-dah we’ll put you here,
Can't you put me somewhere near?

I’m sorry we have no place,
Is something wrong with my face?

You can use the money for this or that,
What if I want to feed my cat?

Showers on the fifth floor they cost a buck,
If I don’t have one am I out of luck?

The center will be closed from noon ’til five,
How’s a person to stay alive?

We’ll give you these sausages and eggs,
Do I have to beg?

Go downtown to look for a job,
I’m feeling a little like a slob.

You just have to get in motion,
It’s like trying to drink an ocean.

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Dreaming | Claire S. Aronson

I’m six
and I dream I’m a princess
in a castle
with a tower to look down from and wave at all the people
and smile at the handsome young prince who loves me.

I’m twelve
and I really want
some private space
with a door I can close and a desk to keep
my secret thoughts, things for school,
and the watercolor set from grandma.

I’m sixteen
and I wish our house was pretty
so I could have friends over
like the other kids, where we could laugh
and dance and play our music and neighbors
wouldn’t yell and fight every night.

I’m twenty-five
and my dreams are grown-up now.
I want to feel safe
and not worry that my baby
will eat the peeling paint
or I’ll trip on rotting stairs.

What I dream of now
is a sturdy house, a roof that doesn’t leak,
windows overlooking a clean street,
a place I can fix up as I like, a little yard
with flowers where my daughter
can play princess and her friends like to come.

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The Sound of a Nickel | Chandra Bloodgood

I have two jobs.
I have two nickels.
I don’t have a home.

Every minute of the day I pray for a home.

I’ve got two nickels to rub together.
I don’t have a home.

There are 1,440 minutes in a day.

I’ve got two nickels.
I rub them together.
I don’t have a home.

Three kids sit at my dinner table each night.
One husband asks me to rub his aching back.

I have two nickels in my pocket.
They clang when I walk.
I don’t have a home.

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Home Is Where Your Heart Is? | Sha' Cage

This woman I know
Lives in the valley of the shadow of death
she spends 24 hours a day outdoors
under a chain-link fenced box
Ringlets of concertina razor wire serving
As constant reminder that she is not human

In southcentral Minneapolis Hennepin County
a reinforced cardboard painted home stands,
its Gothic towers projecting an air of foreboding,

Ostracized by a community
who refuses her presence
she waits

Etched in between the folds of her memory rests
Front pages of panther papers bearing quotes that refuse to be silent
Dripping in Dred Scott residue, it reads
“Blacks have no rights that whites are bound to respect”

This woman I know
Spends 24 hours a day outdoors
While some of us are outraged

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The House Made of Words | James Cihlar

If I could take the moment by the throat,
I would pin it down to paper.
Someone’s got to do it,
set the words in order.

When I was six, my home was not
the long living room
filled with cigarette smoke,
the blue eye at the end.

It was there on the front seat
between me and my father
as we took a drive at night
around the bluffs outside the city,
the green glow of the dashboard
reflecting on our faces.

We carried home with us,
into the booth at the truck stop,
Loretta Lynn and Hank Williams
on the wall-jukebox at our table.

When my father left for good
the words spilled like ink
off the edges of the paper.
It would be years before
I began to pick them up
and lay them in a line.

Someone’s got to do it,
shake the moment
by the collar
and say, Learn.

Some day I will have
a house made of words.
It will be all windows and doors,
with the words lined up in rows,
each one leading to the next,
the way the present
wears the face of the past.

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A Place of My Own | Tim Connelly

I am moving,
away
From the Vets Home.
From a dark and hot room
with a urine-stained carpet.
From a building condemned
like the residents within.
Some days a funny farm,
other days a prison.

A two-room apartment,
on the 15th floor,
overlooking the river.
Nice and quiet.
A place of my own
once again.

I will buy things
to put in my apartment.
I’ll shop at K-Mart,
which I haven’t done
for years.
It will be strange
buying towels and dishes,
once again.

Institutionalized
without knowing it,
and feeling
like a stranger
in my own life.
Now I have
my own apartment,
once again.

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Evicted in Slow Motion | Ray Connors

Sadness and memories come over me.

I sift through the pieces of the last ten years here.

Throwing out the accretions, finding memories of people who once passed through my life.

Notes and artworks of a past now gone.

With eviction held against me, a small room in a house on a corner where drugs are dealt all night is the near future, then probably homeless, holding a sign, begging.

Combat Medic, Quang Ngai 68–69, please help.

Any change is good, only two-and-a-half days left of my life, as I knew it here.

Sadness and memory suffers this place where for ten years I could live my life until the extortions of petty fees not in the lease brought me to resist believing in the law.

Testifying for another tenant, calling inspectors over falling bricks and fire code violations.

Seeing others evicted for poverty really; the manager, a crook with a bank account in the Bahamas, where the little extortions are laundered.

The owners, under shell corporations, are the laundry.

Dominion Investments Bahamas, it’s all explained on their Web site and in “Mother Jones” magazine, November 2000, “The Trillion Dollar Hideaway.”

This dust beneath the farthest corners is the dust of my life.
Tonight my loving little cat curled on my bed with me in this bare room.

We are homeless at noon tomorrow. There is a prospect of a room for us, but no deal is signed, no check written until money is direct deposited on the first.

Evicted, for calling building inspectors too often, in a building with falling bricks and failed fire alarms.

The fire was in the apartment above mine last fall, early in the morning. The alarms didn’t sound. A tenant saw the smoke and saved lives.

Repairs were made cheap. Cheating on the building code. Then the heat was turned off and I called inspectors.

I fought eviction attempts through the winter, and then my lawyers sold me out. “Negotiation,” he called it. Eviction in slow motion.

The last evening of ten years in this place.

The apartment is now nearly bare; a feeling of change comes over me.

The future is rushing on. Nothing will remain.

Insecurity, tumbling dice. To live with little money, to have no control, limited options.

Accepting whatever direction is open, with so many closed. When a door closes for the poor, nothing opens.

Sun is up, low clouds and cold. Nothing to do but wait for my friend with his truck to come.

Out by noon, the court said, the lawyers all agreed. My interest was considered they said, but it was a lie. They were hurrying to get rid of me.

Now I have no home to go to, just the prospect of a room. Later today, maybe. My sweet and loyal cat sits on a box and waits with me.

Evicted
In slow motion.

Sadness and memories come over me.

I sift through the pieces of the last ten years here.

Throwing out the accretions, finding memories of people who once passed through my life.

Notes and artwork of a past now gone.

With eviction held against me. A small room in a house on a corner where drugs are dealt all night is the near future.

Then probably homeless, holding a sign, begging:

Combat Medic, Quang Ngai 68–69
PLEASE HELP!

Any change is good. Only two-and-a-half days left of my life as I knew it here.

This dust beneath the farthest corners is the dust of my life.

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Wish List | Cheryl Criss

Build us one from the ground. In this housing program, I could help
build it too. I want it to have three bedrooms and two bathrooms and a den, plus a study room for me too. I would love a great big
kitchen, so I can move from place to place. I need room while
cooking for my family and friends during the holidays. Give me
plenty of shelves, drawers and a large counter table to season and
cut my meat. I will be baking cakes and pies like mama did back then.

Make my living room fit for a queen. I would put elegant
furniture around everything. The den would be a family room for
the kids. I would put a big screen TV and plenty of games and
movies for them to see. I would go in and ask please turn that TV
down. I could hear it way on the other side of the hall. On the other
side in my room is where I shed my tears and think of the loved
ones I had to leave behind for so many years. It is where I study the
books for college to help me get a better job. This room is where I
pray to help me grow stronger and to heal my broken heart.

My son’s bedroom would have enough room to put all his action
figures and his Playstation too. Even though he has an X-box in the
family room. He likes to play quite to himself and just get away to
take his mind off of the way things used to be. Since we moved here
the nightmares have disappeared. My daughter’s room will be a
room filled with smart things like she is. It would have plenty of
books and a computer too. So she will need room to stretch her legs
or sit at her desk to do homework from school. She also wants a
large window so she can see the moon, stars and the clouds above.
To wake up and see the sunrise would really touch her heart you
know. Yes, this is my wish list, it’s something I dream to one day
have. A home where I and the kids can forget about our past.
Right now we are in a shelter. We had to do this because my
husband had lost his job and some family members too. He then
snapped and began to beat me, cut me and threaten to kill me and the kids. When he began to hit my son for the little things he did. When I caught him touching my daughter I knew this had to end. So when he went off to drink with his friends, we left and never returned to that life ever again. Now we go from shelter to shelter. Only my sister knows where we are. I pray that my wish is not too far. Today, I applied for housing and filled out an application for a job too. I’m taking steps so we won’t be homeless forever and to one day live in peace.

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A Place to Call Home | Bernadette N. Daly

Today, on the radio I heard the story of a refugee, a Tibetan girl
She sits in her Minneapolis apartment, inscrutable behind her shell
She has a startling tale to tell
Of being hunted, hidden
Under a tarp with pounding heart
Amongst vegetables on a rickety cart.
For days life was a Chinese roulette
Escape uncertain, agonizing
Over her lack of goodbyes.

I would like to seek her out and paint
Her faraway look, her utter distance from this foreign city
Which she now calls home, or at least a safe place to stay,
Having just escaped from terror half a world away.
And now she has more walls to climb
Not as high and flinty as her Himalayas
But for her at this moment
Our language, our culture
Are just as impassable.

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Where to Turn? | Shawn P. Dunn

Of all my chores
One takes precedence over
Washing dishes and
Sweeping floors:
Keeping the Wolf away
From the door.

He pays a call
When least expected,
Never bothering to knock,
Even uses his claws to
Pick the lock.

His eyes gleam with delight.
He thrusts a paw forward,
Fangs ready to bite.
Try as I might
To explain money is tight,
He pays no mind.
He’s come for an extended stay—
Like an unwelcomed guest
Who won’t give me rest
He moves right in.

He knows I lost my job,
Haven’t found another.
The Wolf found me right where
He knew I would be.

I now wonder about stuff I never did
When I seemed to have enough:

Will I end up on the street
Begging strangers for something to eat,
On the roam because I lost
My home?

Maybe I can move in
With Hope.
But where does she reside?
In the heart or in the mind?

Her kind is so hard to find.
Elusive.

Like describing colors to someone
Who’s always been blind.

Thought I found Hope one day.

But then I read the reclusive Hope fled.

They razed her residence;
Erected a strip mall instead.

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Show Me Thailand on the Map | Sandra Evans

Houses upon houses, shacks upon shacks,
wood upon wood and corrugated metal
a fiction of urban sprawl without the interstate and malls
jobs to go to in those fuel-less cars,
money to buy frilly lingerie in those shining stores.
The people do pour out of the hillside like rainwater
into houses into shacks, to wait and watch
the sky for bombers decades back in time.
Is there a country to fight for without a name
and a border made of a river and a ridge
not a red line or a black parallel
palimpsest of a motherland.

All this will sail away and you will come to a place
and the people of fifteen tribes
gathered around lakes in the hills of a river
they are doctors and politicians
own greenhouses and markets.
They work at Wal-Mart and Tom Thumb,
take care of each other’s children
and fix each other’s cars,
celebrate lives for days with food and fire.
We speak an almost common tongue
here at the forty-second parallel.

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Home Is Where the Heart Is | Jane Evershed

You held me,
I went to you for solace
You had soft pillows
For me to rest upon
And a warm hearth.
When I left you I was heartbroken,
No more warm summer days
With you.
Nothing to come home to.
Even the children are gone now.

I loved you
Never wanted to leave,
You were my shelter
Out of you
The world would pass by,
It would wave and say hello,
Acknowledging “normalcy,”
The season would change,
And we would be warm together,
Until that day, that I had to leave,

I couldn’t give you all you asked for,
I miss you, and I think of you often,
All those roses we planted,
Must be five feet tall by now,
I have since taken a new partner,
He is so hard and cold,
They call him The Street,
The waves and “hello’s” are aversions now,
I miss you, so much, my home.

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The Man Is Missing | Bonnie Fisher

From the corner just after I leave the freeway,
the old drunk with the tattered sign:

WILL WORK FOR FOOD

I’ve never seen anyone give him work or food.
Most look away as if by not looking
they can make him disappear.

Once someone jumped from a car and chased him off.
Like most
I look in the other direction

although I think of bringing him food,
or of picking him up and bringing him home
to fix a few things around my house,
then paying him well.

I know it’s simply money he wants,
not work, not food.

I think of bringing him money.
I rehearse how I’ll lower the car window
and thrust a 20 in his direction.

“I wish you well,” I’ll say
or I’ll say nothing at all.

I wonder where he’s gone:

to the hospital,
to jail,
to stay with a rich son?

Maybe he’s dead.

What will I do now that he is gone?

Upon whom will I pin my fantasies of
helping the world in some small way
now that the man on the corner is gone?

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Porches | Michael Gorski

When farms faded from your big borders
Then you were a city.
Block after block laid
Upon the flat land to the south
Of the falls. Avenues turned from
Their river alignment to follow a compass arrow.
Neighborhoods spread afield
And Immigrants followed plans
For houses, practical, attainable—
Houses with porches open to the world.

Sixty years later these heavy-built porches
Still extend towards the paved streets
Like covered bridges or wayside rests.
Boulevards of trees have grown large.
Porches permutated, changed their guise.
Porch becomes bedroom sealed in for sleep.
Porch becomes windowed for spring and fall.
Porch stays open with planked floor and posts.
Porch holds chairs, tables, plants, a grill.
Porch connects to street, inviting, like a
Picture window connecting house to sky.

Increasingly isolated, alienated world of disconnection,
Porches reach to the street, to community, neighbors
And there is no TV, only that which is palpable, real—
The lawns of green, awning-like elms, kids on bikes.
In air-conditioned suburbs—no more front porches,
Just garages, decks to the back. We value cool breezes still.
Even in Southie, old black men sit in open garages in alleys where cars go slow.
Even in Eden, old white men sit in open garages on curved streets where cars go slow.
We are guarded, waiting for connection, waiting for the world and it speeds by.

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homeless | Leigh Herrick

leaving
or coming
to the blank garden
filled with broken things
they emptied their pockets
of all they never had
and swept the grounds
of their countenance clean
having lived so long on lies
they’d nearly forgotten
the names of streets
or the letters used
to spell their love

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Growing Up Apartment | Sara Hurley

The first-floor foot race
meant propped-open fire doors,
the danger of oncoming adults.

We flew, bare feet
slapping hard carpeting,
hitching breath to laughter,
breaking our run with the wall.

Aaron always lived in houses, so he said
“I would never raise my child in an apartment.
They deserve room to play.”

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Lava | Sara Hurley

Someone steamrolled the black building on 26th,
left this temporary parking lot
and artist’s rendering.
Affix me here,

a figure behind Little T’s windows,
offered lava and fajitas.
This is the price of fever.
Lumber and concrete burning

River Nicollet to a boil.
Sweet talking me into it’s okay, baby,
six-figure lofts create the housing we need
until I covet them and

cry and curse and
hate that I can’t pull lava from my wallet.
I will duck and cover instead,
drink martinis with orchids

floating in their murky waters
and think change can be good.
I love martinis.
I hope rents don’t

catch malaria.
I am drunk, so it’s easier to sit still
when volcanoes bulge and steam sulfur,
ready to burn these streets clean.

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A New Humanity | Andrea Jenkins

A man once said “I have a Dream”
but

you can’t buy a house with a dream
you can’t feed those babies with a

dream
but

you can’t achieve those things without a dream either

So, what are we talkin’ about here, today?

we are talkin’ about how we gon’ stop the disproportionate
lock

down of our brothers and sisters
we are talkin’ about how we gon’

get these drugs out of our communities

we are talkin’ about how we gon’ help lil’ Johnnie learn to read,
how

we gon’ help Miss Jackson buy that house that she has dreamed
about,

how we gon’ become owners rather than consumers, how we
gon’ take

control of our own lives, for the sake of those yet to come, we
are

talkin’ about a New Humanity.
So I say to you today my friends,

Dream big Dreams
Dream the world you would like to see.
Then wake up and act, with sound

intentions, a moral consciousness and create

A New Humanity.

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People Keep Asking Me Why I Don’t Buy | Kathryn Knudson

I sit, legs tucked under me, on my favorite chair that my uncle gave me before he reluctantly turned into a snowbird three winters ago. Outside and a story below, a duck quacks loudly as if annoyed before taking off from the neighbor’s pond in the middle of a perfect garden I never have to weed.

Rented windows, newly installed, are thrown open. A surprisingly warm April breeze billows ivory curtains hanging from rented rods. The curtains sweep rhythmically,
easily toward me just as my seven-year-old cousin Emily swings by her knees on the jungle gym, almost lazily from a confidence I couldn’t imagine at her age.

My bare-bones kitchen sits across the miniature hall from a pink-tiled bathroom small enough for my outstretched arms to touch all the walls if I lean just slightly into the shower. The pink walls and floor seem to blush slightly at the questionable addition of a swinging-hips young-Elvis clock next to the towel rack, a gift from my sister who said Elvis adds needed pizzazz.

In the bedroom, I’ve created a reading nook—a floor lamp that lists, an armchair cast off from a previous roommate, bookcase salvaged from my bankrupt first employer. I’ve carved out the space by pushing my bed against a wall. I do get the occasional grumble from the occasional visitor when he has to climb over me to get to the pink bathroom early in the morning. But on those occasions, I’m told later, I peacefully sleep right through the disruption.

I can wander around my little apartment in eight seconds, a couple more if I peer out the windows. In ten seconds I can look around and see every handed-down piece of furniture, every book traded with friends, even the scrimped-for computer that has a story, memories that float to me. I can close my eyes and see beyond these items to why I’m happy, how I’m happy. I can see how what I feel here moves beyond this apartment, spills over into the rest of my life.

Maybe I haven’t talked to a mortgage broker yet not because the prices soar while my salary treads water, as I sometimes toss out in tired explanation, but because when I open my eyes, I have trouble seeing far enough beyond this simple, temporary
apartment. Trouble seeing if my life beyond temporary will be happy too.

And I know logically that happiness has little to do with where I am and more to do with who I am, but sometimes, more than occasionally, logic and happiness don’t live in the same space.

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Gifting | Ben Kohler

Last night at the shelter
Nonnie was supervising.
The tattered and shivering straggled in—
some alone, others with children—
to claim beds and floor pads for the night.

Her bucket of pencils, paper and paint
invited idle hands to ply into crafting
rather than to stagnate on laps
and hollow eyes to splash colors in play
than to stare at blank walls
and await the solace of sleep.

On finishing with art time
one little girl’s smile
offered her painting to Nonnie,
who told her it was so beautiful
it best be displayed
in the girl’s own special place.

But the girl’s eyes of surprise
wrenched Nonnie’s heart
and opened her arms to the gift,
for the little girl’s giving
was saying that without Nonnie
there would be no home
for her work of art.

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A Tale of Home | Kathryn Kysar

1.
My children think
home is their toys:
torn curtains for blankets,
puppet theaters,
dramatic, sweeping capes;
the disrobed doll
in the kitchen basket;
the plastic play food—
tomatoes, oranges, and pears;
wooden bowls stolen
from the cupboard.

2.
Their home is enchanted:
clean sheets, pacifiers, and
sparkly pink tights appear magically.
The children are never thrown out.
The parents, talented servants,
wait upon them in this fairy-tale cottage.

3.
The alchemy of time
is measured by our arrival home.
They rush in the door to act out
the stories they heard, the books they read.
We are in a scary forest
without our mom or dad
and no one can save us and we die.
They imagine Hansel and Gretel,
the deaths and departures of parents,
being lost in the forest or woods, alone.
I fold the mound of laundry a few feet away.

4.
Home is not where the toys are.
Home is where we can imagine
the awful, the horrible, the witch,
surrounded by the safety of love and walls,
comfort and warmth, clean towels and milk.
Home is the place where we are not alone.

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Last Names | Julie Landsman

Years and winter years ago,
I taught a 9th grade boy
with the last name of Sam. He smiled whenever
he came into my class, twenty minutes late.
On the chart that showed days present,
His empty squares glared at me. Gone where? This
fine child I missed so much? Some years, you delight
In the way a certain student strings word and image
together into magenta buffalo walking,
into green benches all the way to California,
into pink raindrops on silver sky. This was the boy
with the last name of Sam.

The next year I saw him
leaning against the warm wall of the high school
as he stood laughing with friends,
smoking between classes, catching some rays,
maybe going to class, maybe not.

This winter, a man with the last name of Sam
Burned in his tent, human spiral of flame
Into bitter air. Someone went to the funeral
in suit and tie, someone wrote an editorial.

I found myself grieving this man,
his life under bridges, kerosene out of control,
temperature below zero.

Such sorrow because his last name
Was Sam? Such outrage because I knew him
when he was writing poems about motorcycles and wind?

I hope I grieve him more for his unnecessary
passing. And too, grieve for us who let him
go. We are losing our children, our old men,
our young women in their Wal-Mart smocks
Who search for a place each evening. We are losing
our instinct for great kindness.

We are losing men named Sam
Who wrote fine poems about rivers and muskrats
And the lonely blue heron who sang love songs
Near the lake he visited as a boy.

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A Teacher Mourns | Julie Landsman

Light falls across a room,
a glass bird on a shelf
catches sunshine in early evening,
breakfast smells come up the same old stairs—
these form the seasons of a home.
A girl finds refuge in dependable light after a tough day
on the playground, or after getting off the bus
on the corner of Lake Street and 14th when the boy
with the red shirt teases her about her skinny legs.

Yet in my classroom kids breathe in quick-step,
stutter into my classroom arm and arm with anxiety.
Ten-year-old Lee, whose mother works the night shift,
arrives in the same impeccable blouse
and jeans each day. She has delivered her baby brother
to the neighbor’s house, carrying Justin on one thin hip
from the Shelter to the old woman with too many cats.

I create order out of chaos for the few hours
I have them with me, the few months they live in
my neighborhood.
If I can touch their shoulder, nudge them awake as they
drift off some afternoons, after a night
trudging to a new bed, clothes in a pillow case
bumping against their knees, wanting only somewhere
soft, I can give them a season. Perhaps the slant of
sun beams changing from March to April can hold them.
Sadie comes early, bustles to help me assemble
crayons, paper, scissors, while Troy
dances through the doorway 8th week in a row
still home, still here. We silently bless consecutive days, turn
toward the board and begin our work:
how to tell time
how to predict weather,
how to measure rainfall.

I hold my breath until they are before me each morning:
homeless, drifting kids;
city nomads.
I relax when they appear in front of me,
for at least one more
day of snow against my window.

I sleep easy until Sadie disappears.

Somewhere she claims one corner
of one room for
her consistent stuffed dog,
her red diary book.

I lose hope when
Troy does not twirl through the door,
on a Monday after vacation. My classroom is bereft of his song.
I picture him, over on the north side of the city, trying
to get used to the way the season changes
from a windowless schoolroom, bending over a book
in harsh fluorescent, a new teacher laying her hand
gently on his shoulder, asking him his name.

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Bus Ride of the Homeless | Lisa Lee-Johnson

We are homeless, but I am creative with mine
I took advantage of the time, in my thoughts and protected my
mind
Everyday, we searched for housing . . . and took the bus to different
communities
In search of peace, quiet and opportunity
We would laugh and laugh declaring that’s my house no that’s my
house
Then after a while the sheer reality set in and we all became
quiet like a trapped mouse
Open-mouthed gawked out the bus windows at the well-manicured
lawns
With statues of animals like a deer or a fawn
Children laughing and playing unconcerned without fear or malice
Whom we imagined had names like George . . . Peter
and Alice
Nope, I didn’t have to cook every night . . . we ate whatever they
served
Even if the food was greasy, or cold, or just plain awful I was
grateful I didn’t say a word
The next day we would get up and begin the same routine . . .
We would go to another neighborhood and do the same thing
They didn’t want to play the stupid housing game anymore
They just wanted a home with three bedrooms maybe four
This homeless situation thing has now lasted for over a year
My children grew weary, cruel and mean for the first time they
felt my fear
So we ride the bus in awkward despair
And aimlessly gaze out the windows without hope or care
A year is a long time to live on borrowed time
It’s a long time to live on someone else’s dime
I got a new job and went to work, the children went to school and
are still so ashamed
Those are the homeless kids somebody would yell, like that’s my
children’s name
And I allowed my mind to wonder about anything but this nightmare
And sit quietly and painfully stare
We go back and forth to the shelter, to work, to school, we eat
the food even if it is greasy or cold
And we never speak about the housing game . . . it is like ghastly
folklore untold
With no rhyme or reason
America’s treason
I have lost the vision
The hope, the power to dream

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House Hunting | Mary Logue

I open each door expecting to see that perfect slant of light
on old wood floors, counters to lean elbows on,
whisper of talk, good talk, rising in the air
like the smell of bread, oven door open,
a welcome made of large closets and possibilities,
windows giving on to lawns peppered
with rabbits half-hidden under branches of pine trees.

What I find are other people’s leftovers,
the houses they are leaving, the knicks and scrapes
they’ve made as they’ve bumped
their way through life,
obscure markings that I don’t want to read.

What I come back to is the door
that opens in me, the door that opens in you,
the rooms we create when we come together.
We will bring them with us wherever we move.
They are furnished with the burnished wood
we have rubbed for years with our bodies.
Here we will live, in the house of ourselves,
and make our home in the world, willfully.

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Forest | Mary Logue

Together in the house we swim.

You float in the tub
while I knit a sweater.

I talk on the phone
while you nap on the couch.

The dogs wander between us
like unspoken words.

We touch occasionally.
You pat my head.
I tuck back your hair.

We nod as we pass in the halls.

We recognize each other’s voice
coming from different rooms.
We pass notes about
money and friends and schedules.

The thread of my life tangles
with the thread of yours
until we can’t avoid each other
and fall into bed
arm to arm leg to leg
dreams sprouting from our heads
like new growth in a deep
spring forest.

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Homeless | Nancy Lorimer

I’m finally ready to build my dream, but
Long-snouted bears sniff around the concrete blocks
I’m finally ready to build my dream, but
The framing timber’s locked in ice from last night’s
Storm
I’m finally ready to build my dream, but
All the shingles bobbed down river
I’m finally ready to build my dream, but
The tarpaper, shredded, skirls in the wind
I’m finally ready to build my dream, but
The windows shine with a stranger’s face

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My Little One | Kara Mason

She keeps a rough sack of potatoes in our entryway,
a trough disguised as dressing table,
they squat unseen there, planted in front of the mirror
where we put our mittens, where she rests her small body
on one hand to sigh, and button my purse inside my coat.

We pickle vegetables and store them in my bedroom.
Jars with swimming greens and reds line the windowsill—
still cold from the draft, we spoon them on fried “yaitsa” in the morning.
The jars she saves for the coldest winter months are window bars
that protect me from the night in our ground-floor apartment.

But it is evening, and in our bright kitchen we weigh out heaps
of sugar and flour on a scale against a pile of fifty-gram weights.
She is cutting apples, blackened with rot, sugaring them for the “pirog.”
And I am by her side if only because the oven warms the kitchen
and the night is too dark to go into.

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Breathing Room | Carrie Monroe

One bedroom,
one bathroom,
sunny kitchen,
and dining room.

The most important
room—breathing room
Breathing room . . .
I can afford my rent.

Breathing room . . .
rent’s not sky high
to corporate offices while I
slave at three jobs to get by.

Breathing room . . .
I’m doing it alone
no partner or parents
helping me out.

Breathing room . . .
I have choices now
I can chose to work more
I can save extra money.

Breathing room . . .
breathe, relax, exhale
I don’t have to pay
half my income to rent.

Breathing room . . .
I can take a day off
rejuvenate myself
enjoy my surrounding.

Breathing room . . .
I can follow a dream
there wasn’t time before
working twelve-hour days.

Of all the rooms
in my rented space
I treasure one without walls
. . . Breathing room.

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What Home Means | Steve Mueske

Home means not having to
rely on kindness
for a place to sleep. It means

space, to fill with the late-night
cries of a baby; to walk around in
as the Eastern light shines

through kitchen windows.
The word means more than just
a system of wires and switches,

copper pipes and vents,
places where one wall meets
another. It means being rooted

as a rose bush in the garden.
Surrounded on all sides
by green, house lined with hostas

and staked clematis. Cared for.
In the company of neighbors.
A place to hang photographs,

artwork, even the scribbling of
your three-year-old son.
It’s an address, a residence,

a place where you are known.
It’s the word you think of most
on those noisy nights,

with music blasting down the hall,
as guests pause outside your door
and laugh about tomorrow
never coming.

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House Dreams | Nancy J. Nielsen

I.
The one-bedroom apartment
is hot and stuffy, my papers
clutter everything. I hate
avocado, but I see it
everywhere—carpet, walls, ceiling—
even the outside world sometimes seems
avocado green. Rusty pipes
rattle; I pretend they do not; a
drone of cars passes by. The linoleum
burn in the 3-step kitchen reminds
me of the dust in the cupboards I
refuse to clean. I flick a silver switch
that lets in soft music and partially
hides the awful green. Pushing aside
some papers, I make room for
my day.

II.
The house is cozy,
old, but sturdy, with
hardwood floors and a
garage out back. Pots and
baskets hang above the kitchen’s
butcher-block table; fresh herbs
grow near the window where the
sun shines in. We sit at night
in front of the fireplace on a rust-
colored Persian rug, lean against a
tweed Scandinavian couch and eat
popcorn. The oak mantel was dusted
by the one who comes and cleans. You
take my hand and lead me up the
banistered stairs that creak
softly, flowers on the dining room
table still smell fresh, and the bed
linens are clean. Standing on the tiled
bathroom floor, I wash garden
dirt from my nails. Together
we sleep curled under an autumn
quilt, the window is open slightly, and I
want for nothing.

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This Place I Call Home | Melissa Osterhoudt

I walk through my home
This place where babies were born and suckled
Hearts broken and mended
So many moons I’ve known these walls
This brick and mortar
Infused with my own sweat and blood and love . . .
I live and laugh in this place
A circle of familiar faces
Parade across the terrain of my life
My soul has taken root
Love and friendship blooms and thrives
My children grow strong and free like weeds
This is a place they can always return to
A place to grow old
The parade continuing
And when this flower of my life
Finally withers and falls
They will have scattered my seeds
And still I’ll be planted here
Surrounded by those I love
Basking in the sun
Crying with the rain
Planting spectral butterfly kisses
Upon the plump cheeks
Of my grandchildren’s grandchildren
Tickling their toes with summer breezes
And whispering wise secrets
Planting new seeds of knowing
Deep in the loamy soil of their hearts
Nourishing their roots with conviction
No matter where they roam
They will always be called to this place
This place I call home.

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Home | Melissa Osterhoudt

Three babies were born here
A terrifying force of blood and spent bodies
Quiet coos, tiny suckling mouths
Oceans of tears
A torrent of laughter
Passion and ritual are grounded here
Love grows with the lilies
Chaos regularly takes over
Screaming children
Chasing, wrestling, making birthday wishes
Dirt and dishes copulate here
A never ending, dizzying spiral
From one year to the next
My son grows from boy to man
Bursting at the seams
The moon passes over here
Her belly grows full and fallow hundreds of times
I watch her passage like my own body
I need not even my eyes to see
The place where the floor slants dangerously
The mountain of laundry
Strewn across the girls’ room
Where the placenta landed
Or where we last made love
I know every nail and rattling window by heart
I creep silently through the dark
Listening to my children breathe and dream
Each room is filled with memories
They echo across the years
Planes fly overhead and still
I hear the sound of babies
Crying, sleepless nights
The sound of the tub filling and dishes clanking
So much music and laughter
Walking from one room to the next
I am a time traveler
My life so rich
All Life’s offerings have been had here
The quiet panic of not knowing how we’d make rent
Broken hearts and bones
Countless desperate tears
My eyes are closed
Yet I know every step and moment as if it were my own flesh
The unfinished paint job
The quirky wiring
The way the sink leaks every few months
As if the house were a body and we the organs

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Buying a House | Sand Rector

I.
To Whom It May Concern:
I filed for bankruptcy because my husband left me
and I had two children to feed and clothe.
There was no choice left to me as I also had a new job
and was afraid of losing it because
of bill collectors showing up at my work.
My husband has since left the state
and we don’t know where he is
nor has he made any effort to support us or pay his bills
which, as it turned out, I was also responsible for.
Since filing bankruptcy,
I have tried to improve our life in every way
and have kept up with our bills
and even managed to save enough for a down payment on a house.
I am hoping that by this letter,
you will take into consideration my circumstances
and see fit to give us a mortgage.
Sincerely yours.

II.
The lady next door said she was surprised
that the house I had just purchased was still standing
and that it hadn’t been condemned yet.
We thought the house was perfect.
A safe neighborhood where my daughters
didn’t have their lunch money stolen every day,
a good school nearby,
enough space for us each to have our own room,
a house payment I could manage if I walked to work instead of riding the bus,
a back yard for the kids to play in,
a front yard to plant some flowers,
a kitchen with a stove where all the burners worked,
a dryer that actually dried the clothes.
To a neighbor, an old house to be condemned,
To the real estate woman, a fixer upper,
To us, a castle with endless possibilities.

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Becoming Whole | Deanna Reiter

Becoming Whole
They walk into their New World
Imagining the possibilities
Knowing this is where they need to be
Together
Healing
Becoming whole.
Mother envisions shiny coats of paint
Thick, cushy rugs
Curtains, couches, comfort
Smells sausages on the griddle
Eggs made Her Way
Cookies to aid her budding adolescent
Flowers, candles
So much to save for
So much work
But there is time
And she is here now
Her dream unfolding.

Daughter pictures a high-tech shrine
Television, stereo, cordless phone
And maybe a computer
She walks into the room

Destined to be hers
The bed here
Dresser there
Desk, bookshelf, and closet
This closet!
Could anyone, anywhere fill the whole thing?
Is it possible?
Is it real?

She returns beside her mother
The first smile in months
Since long before
The using dealing yelling beating Father
Husband
Dimmed Their World
Forcing them to start anew
And now they are
Together
Healing
Becoming whole.

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I’ll Call Home | Deanna Reiter

I walk through the
A
L
L
E
Y
Timid,
alone
Looking for dinner
Left from others
Discarded,
unwanted
Just as I am now
I’ve been spit upon
Laughed at
Pushed beaten raped
Continuing my strife
Blessed upon me before birth
And few have cared
Shown compassion
Unable to recognize
Their showy good fortune.
Yet somehow I smile
Still greet the day with my dream
And I walk and I walk
But never complain
Outside my own head
Opportunity opportunity opportunity
Denied
And still I try
But nothing changes
I walk and I walk
In circles
Large circles
Large circles around the city
My days never alter
Nor visions grow dim.
I pray for treasure
Fish out scraps of bun, rotten meat
Cold and stale
Mixed with coffee grounds, cigarette ash
I brush it off, chomp it down
To make it through another day
Fall asleep until
tomorrow
And dream of family
Of justice
Of a time
far away
A dream I believe in
Defend
And depend on
Some day I’ll get back my family
Lower my guard
Rekindle my passions
In a place
I’ll Call
HO
ME.

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Leaving | Laura Purdie Salas

Will the street
lie hard and unforgiving like
the frown that
slashes across my mother’s face?

Will the night
chill my heart like
the icy silence that
drips through my house?

Will the loneliness
stab me like
the words my
parents wound me with?

I will find out.

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Grade School Dance Class | Ann Taylor Sargent

She can’t allow street shoes
on the dance floor.
The wood’s soft, she explains.
There’s a cushion of space
between wood and cement;
the floor has some give.
Sneakers stay in the hall,
the students enter vulnerable.
Young children dance barefoot.
She offers some of them
baby wipes, “a treat for the feet,”
in the same way you’d offer
tissue to anyone with a cold.
But older children need socks:
their feet smell.
Some come without them.
Some have worn the same pair
over and over, are embarrassed
to let the secret out with the stink.
They don’t live with washing machines.
Their families fill apartments
and empty them, cycle
from one chopped-up old house
to the next, spinning.
She doesn’t like to see their shame
doubled by the mirror along one wall.
So she buys athletic socks, on sale.
She hands them to those who ask,
slips them to the few
who hang outside the door.
They pull them on like Christmas,
feeling the soft white terry,
the cushion of space
between feet and floor,
feeling the give,
reason enough to dance.

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A Place to Live | David Scott

No money down, the first six months free
Maybe for the Joneses, but not for me
Predatory lending, rent-to-own, house for sale
A system set up for me and mine to fail
Garcia or Whitefeather, what’s in a name
Before we start to play we’re behind in the game
Applying for a loan, it’s like truth or dare
American dream or reoccurring nightmare
No history, no temple, and so I’ve never learned
To make ends meet because I barely earn
Enough to clothe and feed my kids and myself
United we stand, so why not share the wealth
Broken promises, shattered dreams, and many regrets
Forty acres and a mule so let none forget
We’ve all paid our dues in one way or another
The true spirit of our country is to uplift our brother
So with all that is given and all that we’ll give
No one in America should be without a place to live.

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“Tell Me Mama” | Charlene Torkelson

“Tell me mama, where will we go?
Where are we going to stay?
Where am I going to sleep tonight?
Where am I going to play?”

“Hush now, my little one, don’t be afraid.
Mama will find a way.
We’ll stay in a shelter just for the night,
I’m sure it will last but a day.”

“Tell me mama, where will we go?
The shelter is filled to the brim.
I don’t sleep well on this little cot and
The days seem so long and grim.”

“Hush now, my little one, we’ll find a place
With trees and a fenced-in yard.
I know I’ve told you times before, but
This promise shouldn’t be hard.”

“Tell me mama, where will we go?
I’ve no clean clothes today.
Someone took my small brown bear.
There’s no reason left now to stay.”

“Hush now, my little one, I’ll find a way,
To put a new roof overhead,
Somewhere to put a mailbox outside
And inside, a chair and a bed.”

“Tell me mama, where will we go?
I need some place that’s just mine.
A small corner to call my own—
Then everything else will be fine.”

“Hush now, my little one, time will soon tell.
We’ll save up the money someday.
A dream is a dream is a dream is a dream.
We need just a new place to stay.”

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Second Mementos | Nathan B. Viste-Ross

. . . And from the cherry tree he planted, felled and milled,
Stor Ole made the table that I stand before.
He was my great-grandfather, and in family lore,
When asked “Why sand the underside?” he said “I’ll know.”
Like a homestead or a barn or a field that’s tilled,
This sturdy, simple drop-leaf lets its history show.
Now its unvarnished surface is a fingerprint
With whorls of worn, troughed springwood and ridged summerwood.
When I rest my hands on its top, I just feel good.
Its contours shape a memory that I can touch.
I can recall a man I never met. The tint
And heft about his table might explain him much.
Before it I can feel old, I’m a part, I’m among.
As my father sits beside it, he seems young . . .

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Home Brings | Jennifer K. Wedinger

home brings
the weight of a body
and apron strings
into an easy chair
silences
uniforms and cooking lines
for that sweet hum
of kids singing
into the back of a fan
silences
whiskey pours and pick-up lines
for this magic music
of chopped giggles
swelling in the summer heat
silences
for this tender song
swelling a heart beat
home brings

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Reconstruction in Minnesota | Bryan Thao Worra

In two years, I don’t believe I’ve said more
Than twelve words to my Khmer neighbors
In the apartment below me.
That’s just the way it is.

The other day, I walked past the grandmother
Trying to talk to her Hmong counterpart
Across the hall.

Broken English,

hesitant and uncertain
had become the bridge as each stood in their doorway

fumbling towards something resembling an ordinary conversation.
Gardening and grandchildren seemed to be the subject.

I still don’t know what to make of it all,

My head heavy as a mango without a mouth to feed . . .

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The Olympic Games | Pamela S. Wynn

There was a man and he had naught
And robbers came to rob him

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.
She had so many children . . .
Well actually, it was a cramped
one-bedroom apartment
in the poorest part of town.
And she wasn’t that old.
Recently divorced, without a job,
the father laid off and behind
in child support. And the children,
there were only two: a blue-eyed
blond girl of four and a tow-headed
boy of seven.

The story takes weeks to unfold,
so I’ll skip to the part
where the woman is forced out
and there’s no place
for the children at all.
The building is sold,
wrecker balls tear down walls,
the rubble is hauled away.
And on that spot a stadium built
for the world to come and play.
Flags wave, bands play
and the city swells with pride.

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Question | Pamela S. Wynn

Sun high, throat parched. . .
I’ll knock on a gate and see what the villagers will give me
—Su Tung-p’o (trans. from the Chinese by Burton Watson)

in the park
a festival of flowers in bloom
it’s pointless to try to count them all

on the benches
faceless citizens awake
joggers pass and pick up speed

the first night the concrete was cold
in the parking garage stairwell
the second night temperatures
had risen, the bench was on the edge
of the city plaza
after that a fog crept in
little memory remains intact
of the days and nights that followed

today crows perch on the barren branch
of the oak beside me
dandelions at my feet
I yank them out by the roots

if I were a child again
I’d fashion them into
a necklace
if I were young again
I wouldn’t know
how many children can sleep atop a single sidewalk vent

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Christmas Eve on the Streets | Pamela S. Wynn

He wandered about preaching
those last three years, Jesus,
no place to lay his head. Today,
they could arrest him for that.
He even started out that way,
no room at the inn and all.

At the Governor’s Ball,
gold-rimmed glasses clink
and gowns of satin swish in dizzying dances
on the arms of men of steel.
A heady swirl, a toast,
“Peace on Earth,
good will to men.”

Outside, Rachel’s ghost howls
at each closed door she passes.
Hush now, Rachel.* How
will the newborn sleep
with all your weeping
and lamentations?

*In the Bible, in Jeremiah 31:15, Rachel mourns her sons
and the attempt to destroy future generations.

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Materials | Beadrin Youngdahl

If youthful passion could surround them
They’d have had a fortress at the beginning

If her love could keep them warm
No blankets
Knitted with good intentions
Would be needed

If his anger could build walls
That held out the wind
Instead of the world
They would be safe

If their innocence
Could color a room
It would be sunlit
Day and Night

Fear and uncertainty
Laid like blocks
Stretch for miles
An unseen community

Dogma is cheap
Concrete and clay are line items
“Ain’t it awful?” is easy
Bricks and mortar are tangible

Duplexes that housed families
Of eight or ten; up and down
Bow to the authority
of demolition teams

A flat row of brick townhouses
Are born the next week
For half-a-million each
And a bargain at that

Small fires glow
near tarp-covered burrows
Homes beneath billboards
Broadcasting the Good Life

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