Clive Holden - saigon apartments

the nights we rose from a lover's sleep
to our windows, peering through the venetian blind
fumbling limbs, still gaining consciousness:

a woman's running skreeel

or merely,         crash-
a crude thud and splintering safety glass

or two men squaring in the black back lot

or the deaf lovers' quarrel, hands clashing
in brown half-light, gesticulation
damned denunciation hanging in the air
their heard voices like feral cats, wounded
keening, gutteral and pleading to pleauuuuse!
be let in, more naked than any skin

or the demi-prostitute from saigon apartments
next-door, screaming, sore again at her semi-pimp
suburban boys in ball caps outside her groundfloor
their headlights waiting, her prized blonde tresses
thin white dresses and drunken gait and wail

(from Trains of Winnipeg, DC Books, September 2002.)