ALTERCATION.

[dadio]

He altercated
with Mrs Orbeck

on the stairs.
Something to do

with him
sneaking women

into his room at night.
None of your business

if I do, he’d said.
But it was of course,

written into the tenant’s
agreement he’d signed

the year before
when he’d been desperate

and she seemed nice.
I will not have

that kind of women
in this house of mine,

she’d boomed, rattling
the rafters, shaking

the windows in their frames.
He noticed as she spoke

a thin fine moustache
on her upper lip

where sweat seemed
to have gathered

threatening to jump
like some weary suicide

on the lip’s edge.
He promised her

he’d not have that
kind of women

in his room again.
She wiped her upper lip

to remove the sweat.
He thought her an ass,

she thought him a pain.
They never had (about

women at any rate)
an altercation again.