Poem Of The Week - Oye! This Is An Apartment Building Ode by Dimitri Reyes

Happy Wednesday beautiful Covers!

This week's poem comes from a friend of mine, Dimitri Reyes. His poem was Tuesday's poem of the day from poets.org (I can't remember if I've recommended it before but I suggest signing up to their poem a day series. A poem arrives to your inbox everyday and it's absolutely amazing). I was so happy to see Dimitri's name there.

Anyway, on with the poem:

Oye! This is an apartment building ode. But not just any ode, an ode about breathing, walking, jumping, running, skipping people. An ode to a time where we’d remember what odes felt like to read outside. An ode about oding so hard it boxes itself into a sonnet. Harder than bus stop benches and light rail seats, taxes, and systemic poverty. The oding of this poem is an apartment building sonnet about people stacked up like bricks like words in a sonnet. People that will tap your shoulder to make sure you’re listening to the fact that this poem is a token, a favor, a shirt off their back. Oye! This is The Apartment Building Ode.

There’s Freestyle, Hip Hop, and Bachata on the steps depending on the time of day we pick up groceries. There are bikes by the curb and notebooks on those steps, soda bottles, 2 quarter juices, and candy wrappers in bags. There is a 10pm curfew for noise and the music plays until 9:59, because the stoop DJ wakes up early too. There are “No loitering on the stairs” signs in every hall- way though it is understood that what we do isn’t aimless. There is the smell of food, home-cooked or homemade, plantains in C5, Hot Pockets in A3 and Chinese in the lobby. There are lovers, soothsayers, tall-tale tellers, doers, hustlers, potatoes, flowers, lighters, and so many hand gestures. This is a concrete box that we call home. There is a life we’ve learned to love and live.

I absolutely adore this poem. Dimitri's poem is full of references to New Jersey and he always captivates the life and energy of NJ for someone, like me, who has never been there before. In the small blurb on the poets.org page, Dimitri explains how much joy he gets from performing poems in the spaces that inspired them and this poem is no different.

I think the form is absolutely amazing. I'm not sure if this is correct but if the first stanza is in bold, I'm assuming that's the title? And if so, what an incredible title. The second and third stanza take the form of a sonnet (note the fourteen lines). But even more than that, the titular stanza and the second stanza are both fairly square, almost like floors on an apartment building, and the final couplet almost looks like the steps leading to the building.

I just love that Dimitri's descriptions of this building are so vibrant. From the first line of the second stanza, I can hear the different music. I love that even the dJ has to be up early in the morning and I can smell all the food. It's so sensory and it's all packed down into the final couplet. After all that description, Dimitri simply calls it a 'concrete box'. It's so simple following from that lively exploration of the neighbourhood but it works.

I can't wait to see what you think of it.