Neighbor

When my kids were small

our neighbor yelled at her kids

who were old enough to yell back.

Every evening we’d have

Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile, followed by

Get out! Fuck you, you bitch!

My son’s bedroom window

was a straight shot from their kitchen,

a natural place for fights to start.

Her vocal cords could herald gladiators,

vibrate the galleries of the Colosseum.

Sometimes I’d knock on her door

and tell her it had to stop.

You try talking to them, she’d say,

pulling me into the house

with her fat, foamy arm,

sitting me down at the kitchen table

across from her daughter, furious

hair flickering around her face,

and her son, slumped

into the hood of his sweatshirt.

Sometimes I just called the police.

But when her kids grew up and left,

she got a boyfriend. And late at night

when I hear her cry out,

I can’t help but be happy for her.

She, who’d been so miserable and alone,

now thrown into the democracy

of the body’s pleasure, set free.