Notice To Quit Poem by Romella Kitchens

"Notice To Quit: Poems" 1



Sometimes hatred takes different routes into the soul.

One perpetually used route driven by hatred is "race."



We are born into a brown skin, a Black skin, an "African".

We are born into a difference to make an individual whole.



After a landlord that I cared about died, the nephew baulked.

The nephew did not want a Black tenant and went to war.



I paid my rent but not what he thought of as rent.

He accused me of hurting his aunt by not paying the new rents.



There, his Aunt and I were friends and I would not have hurt her.

He accused me of having slept with her to get a lower rent.



I do not engage with people in the ugly manners, only the good.

If we were half the things the evil think we are we would be shame itself.



Notice to quit. After years of paying rent. I tried to buy but I was too "Black."







The Redlining Of Pittsburgh



Once a White woman saw me walking down the street.

I wasn't where she thought a Black person should be.



She stopped on the sidewalk trembling teaching me her "class."

I simply smiled said, "Good morning, " then walked on.



She regrouped and responded "Good morning, " the walked on.

But, around us, between us, the redline grew.



The line was thick and went through the Hill District and further.

It cut off the edges of East Liberty with blood and vitriol.



It gave good housing to some and bad to others.

The line pulsed, it sobbed, it mourned, it burnt, beat and denied.



The redline forms fissures in the streets of humanity.

The redline overflows into greed, supremacist beliefs and murders.



The redline used to grant electricity and indoor plumbing to Whites only.

To Blacks it left the darkened building after light and out houses.



We must remember the histories we now are evicted for our melanin.





Racial Dirge



3 Rivers surging through my city of Pittsburgh.

I call out to you and ask: 'Where shall I go? "



Everywhere a Black person goes there is eviction.

Then, one night I went past a building taken from Blacks.



The lights were on and on the 3rd floor I saw people doing drugs.

I saw people laughing and drinking loudly and engaging body to body.



I stood on the side walk and thought of the people who had been there.

Those people had almost become completely homeless.



The lights were on and I saw their well to do entitled replacements clearly.

I saw drugs sold out the back door to other entitled people.
I understood then, people who hate you are sometimes worse, not better...

They are only assumptive they are giving the world more but are wrong.

I thought of the family that had to wait for housing in a homeless shelter

Just so the evil could live closer to bars, pubs and bacchanals.
Remember there is a war going on and it is not set up or fought by you.

Sing a completely pained song into the rivers and be met by a choir of regret.



Notice To Quit,2



I walk by a dumpster and see how even

mainstream people are treated by the evil...

At least forty thousand dollars of furniture

mostly new, smashed into that metal hate.



There at the top, its shining eyes peering

out helplessly, an expensive, brown child's

Teddy bear.

My heart beat wildly, wanted to find the

Child, hand the bear to him or her and say

Never be like this to other people, the besought

Will not struggle forever.

I wanted to heal pain in an excruciating situation.



2.

The next day, walking past the dumpster, the teddy bear

was gone and an expensive blue, plush chair.

Maybe the bear and the chair walked the city all night

looking for their people in sorrow's indigo blue and found them.

Maybe a little child and their mother came and got them.

Maybe someone parasitic snatched them from the trash

profiting from severe pain and made off.