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Afternoon Delight She’s screaming now and who can say if it’s sex or pain, love or something else? Their bed moves above mine, moves mine, moves out from the wall and circles the hard-wood: a carnival ride, spider or sizzler, something spinning, something multiple, which also sounds like cats tear-assing from dresser to bed to sill to kitchen to couch to bed to floor to bed. I don’t mind this at night. I move with her, even, sometimes. But in the afternoon I wonder—should I climb the stairs? Should I listen at the door? Should I knock? Call the cops? In this light I just can’t tell if it’s sex or pain, love or something else incomprehensible to me, living down- stairs as I do, with the most mannered of dogs: my crotch unsniffed, my own afternoons so orderly, my bed pushed back against the window and made. Sheila Squillante is the associate director of the MFA program at Penn State, and her poems and essays have appeared in such print and online venues as Prairie Schooner, Quarterly West, Phoebe, The Southeast Review, Melusine, TYPO, 42Opus, Brevity and PANK Magazine. She has been the recipient of fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and received a Pushcart nomination for her work in 2009. |
