Second Person Plural
A man lives in an old house converted to apartments.
There is still a servants’ staircase, but now it
leads to a blank wall. And the walls are paper,
the ceilings must be crepe paper: every night
the man hears his upstairs neighbor getting it
from somebody, hears her gasping, even hears
her bed squeaking. Midnight, 2 a.m., he gapes
at the ceiling, he almost expects to see
their fluids come suffusing down through
the crepe paper, enough to put out the cigarette
he’s smoking. How they go at it, …
