Terry Collett - Altercation

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.

Terry Collett

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