Hotel #7


Are you high? you whispered. The pillows hummed
like sweet pools of lit amethysts, the sheets as smooth

as a girl's long, long back. You worried about cameras
hidden in the walls. I worried that our neighbors' mumbling

had a pulse, a morse-like code. Vending machines rang
robotically, unsteadily, downstairs. Do you want me to be?

Your face edged by the deep blue glow of the pool at night,
how my feet moved so slowly through it, swish, swish.

The 24 Hour Flu


Was what she called it for weeks: all night popcorn,
all night kitchen-wall scouring, all night swearing

and weeping with her hand over the stove's red ringlets.
And then little blue pills with sugar and coffee to help

my headache. We traded lipsticks in hotel parking lots,
me in the front seat, freezing in blue pajamas. Look

what you've done to your daughter, she was always
yelling at someone, somewhere. In the rearview
mirror, I mouthed to myself, I can't watch.

The Lost Wax Method

I know about your fall,
the time in the hospital.
I know about 1983.

When the sun stuck its hooks
into the backs of your hands.

When every gesture pushed
through a rubble of dead
birds and someone else's bricks.

This is too hard to read, so let's put
it inside our mouths and suck. All
this 7-11 cake, and we're still hungry.

I want to buy you something,
after all you lost for me. A washing
machine, a can opener, a kitten with six legs.

I'll find you the pill to let you sleep,
I'll find you the silence we paid for.

Take 23

a woman asks, "the horses, which side did they fall 
                                 on during the quake?" 
  and I tell her it hasn't happened yet, to call back in a minute

 I'm wearing the same blouse as the girl on TV,
  the same tiny brown flowers that flow up the neck,
the same plastic, pearlized buttons, and in this dream,
   you're taking it off me, button by button, 
until something like a fishhook jabs your hand and you yell; 
            
 I want to apologize, 
   but I'm standing by the river and shivering, 
      and you're still on TV 
       
and someone else answers your cell, 
 sounding like a pilot or help desk employee, 
  shouting louder and louder 
   until vibrations fill the glass box

 and it's then that the horses shift and pound in their stalls, 
making those 
    small coughing noises called "whinnies"
   
then that the payphone under the dung pile rings again,
 and the receiver slides out of my hand, 
    a large-eyed fish looking up at me,
      trying to fly and failing