S.C. Hahn, one poem

OLD MARRIED NEIGHBORS ACROSS THE HALL

It begins with a low rumble

as when water starts to boil,

when pearls of bubbles rise:

she raises a question, and he

replies with a degree of heat

in his voice, and soon the air

is steaming, the words roiling

almost to a shriek. But in a second

the temperature drops and all

that remains is a fog on the inner

pane of the kitchen window,

where a finger could trace a heart.

S.C. Hahn is a native of a Nebraska farm, has lived in Sweden since 1999 but still calls Nebraska "home", and is now retired in Stockholm. His poems and prose poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies in the US and the UK, and a chapbook of prose poems, A Sky That Is Never the Same, was published in 2008 by Stray Dog Press (now Argos Books). He also translates poetry from Swedish, particularly Tomas Tranströmer and the prose poems of Carl-Erik af Geijerstam.