can you hear them?
by K ANDERSON
in Fall 2022
Karim Brown, from On Being a Child, 2022
1202 Arch Street
Hotel
At the corner of 12th and Arch, my window lay smack dab in middle of all the others. Surrounded like we always playin’ Hollywood Squares. I heard Mr. Farmakis asking ole boy next door if he knew anyone looking for a room, said he got rooms to fill, still.
“The floors are cleaned and waxed. Next colored move in here need to barely be able to hold a 45 in they hands, like the rest of the you fellas,” he said. All this I heard through the wall. I hear too many things cause these walls.
Last time someone came over here, they said they could hear they voice talk back to ‘em from the next room over.
I wonder if the rooms will tell us to shut up one day with all the noise we be makin’.
1013 Callowhill Street
Private Home
Landlord Mrs. Betha Thompson
Six-point roundabout always confuses me when I’m headed home from West Philly. By the time I make it home, she’s still selling brown to folks walking from under the bridge to the next party.
I get what I pay for.
A room at a star-crossed way can only get me but so much.
1002 Brandywine Street
Dingy, dirty, nasty. Dingy, dirty, nasty, I say.
Mrs. Costello ain’t brought nobody out in months to fix my door. Only one person here besides me, but I need privacy like they do.
My little money is paying for somethin’ at least.
Shouldn’t have to put my good chair up to the door just to keep these winds out. I’m here tending to this cough and winter done moved in here like they stay across the hallway.
907 Buttonwood Street
Peels and drips
Eleven
Benjamin robs
Us, who wouldn’t rob
Ones with drips
to feed their children
327 N. Marshall Street
Landlord Otto Lock,
Rooming house
Leaning to the side and all, one bulb battles her every day. She pays my pace from wall to wall and reminds me to lock our room.
Three corners she keeps dark to keep me where she can see me. There’s more to see from the windows anyway so I can care less.
Heard the woman drop a heavy somethin’ below my feet the other day. She wakes me up every time I dream about how nice that woman’s room must be. Hoping she’s cooking for one and never two like me.
It’s never just me in here anymore.
These written and recorded fictive micro-histories are shaped from real estate records buried in the Philadelphia City Municipal Archives. You may search for themif you dare. I wonder who awaits your arrival.
K Anderson is a writer, porn archivist, and kinkster. Raised in Atlanta and getting further from home each day. Broadly, she writes, studies, and teaches about black sexual economies and geographies, pornography, BDSM, and kink. And yes, she's ready to play.