These Walls

Philadelphia, 1985: shuttered factories, stubborn neighborhoods, where racial tensions, economic decline, and fierce local pride coexisted with block-by-block resilience and the daily insistence on survival.Philadelphia, 2020: hushed, anxious city-streets half-empty under lockdown, grief and fear moving through house walls even as neighbors found quiet, improvised ways to care for one another amid uncertainty.The Baldwins lived here in 1985 and the McClarens took up residence in 2020. Their experiences were separate yet similar as they inhabited the same Philadelphia home, worlds apart. These Walls is a verse novella in which the house serves as a quiet witness telling the story of these two families. As the poems move between timelines, striking parallels emerge in how families respond to crises, care for one another, and absorb public history into their private lives. Intimate and spare, These Walls explores how place holds memory, revealing how different generations endure remarkably similar struggles-and how history lingers within the walls we call home.