Poem of the Day: Probation

1 / 29 / 2015

Poem of the Day: 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. Averill Curdy, “Probation,” from Poetry (April 2005). Copyright © 2005 by Averill Curdy. Source: Poetry (April 2005). AVERILL CURDY Biography  More poems by this author