Poetry: “I Stalk the Piedmont Houses on Zillow Just to Feel Something” by Zoe Dorado
“People / from the Bay always say they’re like upper-middle-lower-class / when they’re actually a South Park punchline. But we like to believe / we’re funny. I want to believe that I’m in on the joke.”
Here is a fresh poetic commentary, by emerging poet Zoe Dorado, on class, culture, and gentrification with the ever-growing backdrop of suburbia.
I Stalk the Piedmont Houses on Zillow Just to Feel Something
with the seven figures and believe again in the economy. People
when they’re actually a South Park punchline. But we like to believe
at math because the line that curves into her is a type of division. Strategic
anatomy. Historical displacement. I’m lucky because sometimes
when I keep zooming out on Google Maps, I become ant-sized and
therefore inculpable. Time warps on the micro level so no one can catch me. I am too fast
to be clicked on. I am too good at talking myself out of a comment
section-sponsored debate when I don’t have enough evidence to prove who “my people” are.
Like on LinkedIn, the 17-year-old from Walnut Creek is a global educational activist
but can’t remember the teacher strikes 15 minutes away. Still, everything can be internationally
quantifiable – 501(c)(3)-certified these days. Sponsored by Stanford. Sexy in the mouth. Same reason
why I-580 banned trucks and traffic congestion. All you breathe in is goats
hired to eat the hills. That’s why Mom doesn’t take I-880 even when she’s running
late for work. Why there’s better Filipino food in Union City but Californian-meets-Asian cuisine is
only in North Berkeley. Sometimes, I think I might be priced out of my culture
if it’s rated five stars on Yelp. Sometimes, I think the only chance I’ll be able to live
in a walkable community is by going to college. All the teen poets add Kenyon and IYWS to their
CVs under Education when they take a flight to the Midwest – their semi-coastal urban suburbia
growing smaller and almost, almost gone. Becoming something close to worth
writing for. But O, the way a cow sniffs at the apricot glint of a cicada-filled-desert-of-a-
tall-grassy-drugstore-in-Ohio sun looks hotter on Insta. It’s got that virginal-grungy-glow. Touched
and untouched by whoever can name the difference. It’s predictable but fuck,
I love it. I vote yes on the submissions that seem isolated from wealth.
They feel more alive I think. They’re like so American
landscape. They’re like so Joan-Didion-meets-John-Steinbeck I want to scream.
But I want to be beloved too. I’ve decided to pay for more things that aren’t dowsed in broken
English for aesthetics. It’s better that way. I want to go somewhere where my country loves me
like a deserving homeowner. I want my Buicks and Fords and stretching highways
that lead to nowhere. I want to drive around in a circle ‘til I run out of gas
Zoe Dorado
Zoe Dorado is a Pinay writer from the San Francisco Bay Area and a student at Pomona College. Her poetry appears in The Offing, Haymarket Books, Bullshit Lit, her notes app, and elsewhere. She is the 2024 Youth Poet Laureate of the Western U.S. and an Assistant Poetry Editor at The Adroit Journal. You can find more of her work at zoedorado.com.
