Interview with a Victim's Neighbor on the Fifth Anniversary

Interview with a Victim's Neighbor on the Fifth Anniversary

"Myself? I didn't make the call. The woman next door
it was, who called me first and then the cops,
and the whole time she natters on and on
about not wanting to be a nosy parker,
but the neighbor straight across the street,

she's the one who found her that morning, poor
thing. You should see how the mother slaps
her even now, and the girl out there all night in the rain,
and her just barely eleven, nothing but trees over her
in that storm and, well, you could see she wasn't right

in the head, the mother, I mean. Why, she wore
that path you see in the front lawn pacing until...
who knows, something with that man of hers,
and the girl filthy, shivering, sniveling, always too
scared to have a good cry. So the mother wraps her up

in a khaki army blanket so rough and draggedy I swear
I wouldn't give it to a stray dog to sleep on. Well,
she wears it like a cape and sits in one of them white chairs
on the porch, and the mother, standing over her, goes,
'No, no, no, no, no.' And I thought she'd never stop."