The Woman Downstairs

Chicago is where the woman downstairs

Starved herself to death last summer

Her boyfriend Ted ate hot dogs and wept

With the gray rats out on the fire escape

In a thrift store chair I drank cases of beer

And dreamed of laying down on the El tracks

The trains roared by under smoke-gray skies

Lake Michigan rose and fell like a bird

And when the wind screamed up Ashland Avenue

The corner bars were full by noon

And the old stewbums sliding down their stools

Ate boiled eggs and fed beer to the dogs

The woman downstairs lost all her hair

And wore a beret in the laundryroom

I borrowed her soap and bought her a Coke

But she left it on a dryer

She died in June weighing 82

Her boyfriend went back to New York

The cops wandered through her dusty rooms

One of them stole her TV

And when the wind screamed up Ashland Avenue

The corner bars were full by noon

And the old stewbums sliding down their stools

Ate boiled eggs and fed beer to the dogs