Fountain Avenue Apartments
Doug Draime, August 2009
The woman next door
was screaming at her kid again,
yelling horrible things at her.
The little girl probably
not more than 4
or 5,
being called a bitch and
a evil little asshole.
I listened to her crying
through the stucco walls.
It was the worse
it had ever been,
since I moved in
a couple months before.
Previous outbursts had never
been that loud.
And it usually stopped after
10 minutes or so.
But this time it went
on and on
“You wasted cum of a drunk,”
the woman screamed.
Something heavy
and substantial crashed
against the wall,
like innocence being destroyed!
It was the first time I had heard
things shattering
and breaking.
I couldn’t fucking take it a moment
longer. I became enraged and all
I wanted to do was stick
my boot up the
woman’s drunk and ignorant ass.
I pounded hard on her door
3 times, yelling, “I’m calling the cops.”
Silence from the other side, so
I pounded again.
“If I hear so much as you raise your
voice to that kid again, I will have
you arrested. Do you fucking hear me?”
Silence. I stood there for
a moment bending my
ear closer to the door,
listening.
Not a sound.
I walked back to my apartment
The next day when
I came home from work,
I learned that the
woman and her kid
had moved out,
owing 2 months back rent.
I think about the little girl now and then,
after all these years, and wonder
how she turned out.
If she has been resilient, broken the cycle,
and now, maybe, she is
a loving mother
to her own little girl?
The alternative possibilities of what
could have happened
to the her in her life, considering the travesty of her abuse,
are thoughts I avoid.
Anyhow, that is not what this poem is about
Doug Draime emerged as part of the ‘underground’ literary movement in Los Angeles in the late 1960’s. Most recent books are: “Knox County” (Kendra Steiner Editions) and “Los Angeles Terminal: Poems 1971-1980” (Covert Press). Forthcoming are 2 large collected volumes: “Transmissions From The Underground” (d/e/a/d/b/e/a/t press) and “Farrago Soup” (Coatlism Press). Also, being released in 2009, a chapbook from Tainted Coffee Press, “Boulevards of Oblivion”. His diverse range of writing including: poems, short stories and plays, continue to appear in publications worldwide. Awarded PEN grants in 1987 and 1991. Nominated for 2 Pushcart awards in 2008. Draime moved
to the foothills of Oregon in the early 1980’s, where he still resides.
