The Condo Shall Inherit the Earth

When you take a walk around the western edge of Chelsea, you can feel the ground shake with the rising of condo towers. Every day, more and more. Here is a selection seen while walking from 10th Ave. and 18th St. to 11th Ave. to 24th St. and down again. Just a few short blocks, but oh so many ticky-tacky glass boxes. More heave up from the south, the north, the east. If they could, I am sure they would rise from the Hudson's riverbed. They sprout like an overnight invasion of fungi. So I'll let Sylvia Plath say the rest with her creepy poem "Mushrooms."


Chelsea Modern

Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly

Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.


459 W. 18th

Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.


unmarked site guarded by svedka fembot

Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,


Nouvel Chelsea with "mechanized oculi and veils of glass and steel."

Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!


200 11th Ave.

We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door.


245 10th Ave.