Probation

Probation

BY AVERILL CURDY

The cheap dropped ceiling

         jumped like a pot-lid boiling

when our upstairs neighbor

      chased his girl that winter.

             Falling out of

summer’s skimpy tops

    she’d want our phone. Her plush lips

creased. Not exactly blonde,

       but luteous, we thought,

                     pleased the right word

was there for that shade

       of slightly slutty mermaid.

Wincing, we’d hear him punch

      along the floor on crutch-

               es, a giant

bat trying to mince

         a mayfly. Sex and Violence

you called them; Blondie with

         Dagwood on crystal meth,

               I’d tell our friends

over dinners stewed

       in noise. Even his truck cowed.

Black, smoked glass, outsized wheels

       flaunted like chrome knuckles

                we shrank from, ducked,

afraid we’d find her

         later, knocking at our door.

Some nights we waited through

      like captured prey. To you

               I’d turn in bed,

saying the furtive

         words against your back, I love

... You’d stroke my hair, or hip,

         all our years the same flip

                  crack, I do, too.