Riverside Hills Luxury Residences

Where’s the river?
Is that bump in the pavement a hill?
The two-story red brick building:
a layer cake, ten units,
one on top of the other
in a row of five.

 As soon as you step inside,
 you smell marijuana, curry,
 hear television sets
 blaring behind thin walls.
 Residents pad barefoot
 down the moldy, waterlogged hallway carpet
 to the bank of mailboxes
 in the fluorescent-lit foyer.
 
At least it makes my job easier.
I’m the mailman,
Riverside Hills on my daily route.
Ten mailboxes all in a row,
making me think of a crematorium.

Charles Rammelkamp is prose editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore. A collection of persona poems and dramatic monologues involving burlesque stars, The Trapeze of Your Flesh, was published in 2025 by BlazeVOX Books.