[encore] 929: this is a library
[encore] 929: this is a library
This episode was originally released on July 26, 2023.
Transcript
I’m Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.
Last year, as part of a summer writers conference in California, I gave a poetry reading in an outdoor pavilion at a community college. Afterward, I signed books and talked with attendees, from senior citizens to high school students. Everyone was in good spirits. So, it was during this post-event reverie that I placed my iPad on the ground near my feet at the signing table and forgot about it.
Early the next morning, I recalled my blunder and returned to the location. A slight dew covered the empty white chairs and stage. No iPad. I called campus police, hoping someone turned it in. Still, no iPad. Instead, I filed a report. After my morning workshop, I opened the “Find My Device” app on my phone. Sure enough, the iPad showed its blue dot in a nearby community off a walking trail just a mile away. I hit “Play sound” when found.
I followed the path on foot. As I walked closer, a cluster of tents and blue tarps came into view. Then, structures of cardboard and discarded wood. Piles of clothing and bike parts littered an expanse of dirt mounds. In the distance, a small circle of men stood holding bibles and praying. My iPad was in the middle of a homeless encampment, in a massive compound of unhoused people.
Near the path, I faintly heard a beeping noise coming from the vicinity, but it seemed wrong, unethical even, to march in and demand the return of a mere technological device amidst a real struggle for economic dignity. While I and others enjoyed the jovial proceedings of a writers’ conference, not too far away, twenty families lived parallel lives of immense poverty.
The poor are invisible to many, until they are not, standing with a sign at a stoplight or the end of a highway exit or curled up at night, outside, on beds of newspaper in front of shuttered stores. Against the backdrop of our busy lives, they are a distorted portrait of indolence. We recoil. We look away.
Today’s empathetic poem, which takes the tone of an elementary school primer, encourages a greater noticing of those who are leastwise among us, who fall outside the social fabric of our care. In doing so, hopefully, we might reverse prevailing attitudes toward the unhoused, who often are the target of violence and intolerance.
this is a library
by Asiya Wadud
this is a library these are books this is men with nowhere to go this is the Chelsea Hotel these are pee boots this is a keen stench these are letters this is the mystery collection and this is a library this is a respite this is a heads down hotel this is a man doing his job tap tap on the shoulder this is no motel this is a toilet flushing loudly this is a potent stench this is the greasiest hair these are bent backs this is everyone there everyone alone this is old men no sons this is some love then none this is hot hope done gone this is a hot weather respite this is a winter shelter these are books this is Gwendolyn Brooks these are the weathered books these are the weathered men this is a lit lantern an ancient hope a queuing disaster this is a library rainy day and wet dog men 5 PM lights out the men return tomorrow no doubt no doubt
“this is a library” by Asiya Wadud from CROSSLIGHT FOR YOUNGBIRD © 2018, Asiya Wadud. Used by permission of Nightboat Books.