Second Page of Apartment Lease – Tenancy

Philip Raisor

Walt Whitman was a great master of irony, loving and caustic,

but his tongue-in-cheek description of a landlord “perfect and

unharm’d, every inch as good as myself,” is a fine beginning

to describe the relation between landlord and tenant. Mutual

respect, without the tongue-in-cheek. So, rules that guide

the relationship must be clean and fair:

  1. Keys belong to tenant. We will ask
    permission to enter, unless a water heater
    breaks or tenant wields a gun or scimitar.
  2. Paintings, sculpture, archival material,
    Turkish rugs, pictures of grandmothers,
    Peanut comics, Post-Its, lists of carry-outs
    are comforting. Remove tacks, fill holes
    when you leave.
  3. Feeding squirrels, constructing cabinetry,
    shelves for Top Shelve Weed, cactus
    for backyard planting are not permitted,
    though you may imagine how such items
    might enhance your comfort.
  4. We won’t count the number of lights on,
    how many showers you take, if you
    manage waste properly (do not hang
    bed-wetting sheets on rails), but recall
    we pay utilities. Appurtenant thereto:
    cameras on buildings roll every hour.
    Inspectors are not your friends.

Impurity is an irregular exercise, allowed because

we’re human. Late fees, testy correspondence, court dates

are the devil’s work. Voodoo and prayer are medications.

Philip Raisor has published eight books, most recently That Naked Country (2019). Outside Shooter: A Memoir (2003) and Headhunting and Other Sports Poems (2014) were influenced by the Civil Rights and Anti-War Movements of the 1960s. His collection, Swimming in the Shallow End (2013), was nominated for the Poet’s Prize, and Hoosiers the Poems (2013) won the Palooka Press Chapbook Prize. His edited volume of essays on W. D. Snodgrass was published in 1999. He has taught at Louisiana State, Valparaiso, Kent State, and Old Dominion University, and now lives in Virginia Beach, Virginia.