the landlord

*adapted from P.K. Page’s “The Landlady”

Through sepia air the boarders come and go,

Impersonal as trains. Pass silently 

The craving silence swallowing his speech; 

Click doors like shutters on his camera eye.

Because of him their lives become exact:

Their entrances and exits are designed; 

Phone calls are cryptic. Oh, his ticklish ears

Advance and fall back stunned.

Nothing is unprepared. They hold the walls

About them as they weep or laugh. Each face 

Is dialled to zero publicly. He peers 

Stippled with curious flesh.

Pads on the patient landing like a pulse,

Unlocks their keyholes with the wire of sight,

Searches their rooms for clues when they are out,

Pricks when they come home late.

Wonders when they are quiet, jumps when they move,

Dreams that they dope or drink, trembles to know

The traffic of their brains, jaywalks their street

In clumsy shoes.

Yet knows them better than their closest friends: 

Their cupboards and the secrets of their drawers,

Their books, their private mail, their photographs

Are theirs and his.

Knows when they wash, how frequently their clothes 

Go to the cleaners, whato they like to eat,

Their curvature of health, but even so

Is not content.

And like a lover must know all, all, all.

Prays he may catch them unprepared at last

And palm the dreadful riddle of their skulls–

Hoping the worst.

Speaker: an observer of the landlord

Audience: anyone who is familiar with a landlord

Situation: a landlord stalks his tenants

Shift: lines 20-21 where his mind shifts to obsessive actions

Tone: neutral and informative

Mood: uneasy, eerie, paranoid

Thesis: In Ceili Blomquist’s poem, “The Landlord”, she portrays the landlord first as innocently curious, but as the poem progresses he turns out to be intrusive with cynical motives.