NO GIRL NEXT DOOR
by
Jonathan Vos Post
The girl next door. What girl? What door?
No true next door in an apartment house
in Brooklyn Heights in the Korean War.
The girl upstairs, in a flowered blouse,
twisted by Polio, playing "Night and Day"
on a lonely piano. The girl Dad called "Mouse"
or "Mousie," two floors down, after her sister went away,
her brother went through Synanon, her parents' divorce,
was a prostitute in a negligee.
All single mothers proud without remorse,
women who cast their lives into careers,
widows, students drugged through another course,
were lost in a rented maze, dazed by the years
when "Night and Day" drowned out the Music of the Spheres.
1148-1231
17 Apr 85
Copyright 1996, 1997 by Emerald City Publishing.
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