Assistant Editor Michael Alessi: Stewart’s piece centers around a feud rife with minor acts of arson, missing cats, and the reek of rotten eggs hidden under floorboards, but what’s most arresting is the way each line plays with and builds upon a pattern of escalation, finding poetic rhythms, humor, and pathos in the repeating juxtapositions of the “he” and “I” of its titular landlord and tenant. Like my favorite flash pieces, it resists easy resolution, leading instead to a place of contemplation and possibility.
To hear Stewart read the piece, click below:
My Landlord and I
I could paper the walls with eviction notices. He is trying to break me. He wants me out. I have filled the sink in case he turns off the water; instead, he turns off the heat. There is a layer of ice in the toilet as thick as skin. I nestle eggs under the floorboards and encourage them to bloom with rot. He looks for loopholes in the lease.
Somehow, he got my girlfriend’s phone number; he calls at all hours to tell her vicious lies. Someone has let the air out of my landlord’s tires. And somebody has stolen my cat. Somebody has accused someone of some terrible things, and someone has set fire to somebody’s yard.
He dreams of perfect tenants: quiet families with copper pots and tasteless art. I hide messages behind the light-switch covers, on the bottom panels of the cabinets, on top of the door frame, anywhere they might survive hasty painting, an attempt to erase me.
He calls the police and tells them he can smell dead bodies. With my BB gun, I take shots at his wife. He stops the trash service. I send obscene messages to his ill and elderly parents.
He dreams of tenants who brunch, and I stack my books against the door. He dreams of wives in summer dresses, and I eat the last of the tuna. He dreams of the inevitable, as do I.
Michael Hugh Stewart is the author of four books and recipient of the Rhode Island Council for the Arts Fellowships in both fiction and poetry. His work has appeared in Conjunctions, American Letters & Commentary, Fence, and other literary journals. He teaches creative nonfiction at Brown University. michaelhughstewart.com
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