Deep August.
On some island
yellow, scrawny
I struggle with words
english and rounded.
Conversations dipped
in sea water; sand
in the bowels of Penguin
modern classics.
Hotel room.
Two childish, small frames,
too out of scale.
The plaster peels off the walls.
It bothered me at first
it soothes me now.
I shouldn’t be asking for more.
The sheets are thin, transparent almost
cool in the afternoon breeze.
The bed creaks.
On the desk,
four empty bottles of water
in a line.
An unused ashtray. A pen.
The American Heritage Dictionary of the
English Language.
The poplar trees outside molt.
White fluff on white everything.
Cicadas explode
on paper like loaded words
I dare not play putty with.
Roget’s Thesaurus.
A grey cat that photographs well
on the yellow wooden chair.
A man;
American and cultured and clean
but most of all a lover
of everything well-crafted and original –
books
shoes voices
a
certain clean light in the afternoon.
Leather sandals
Khakis
Soap
Boxes as categories to arrange the world
The marble under the bathroom door
is cracked and loose.
I have to put it back together every time I
forget
not to step on it.
The first day, the shower hardly trickled.
This morning it poured.
I washed
and washed
made the bed
pulled the sheets
folded the blanket
puffed the pillows
placed them
on top of each other
everything in place.
The room crisp
almost un–lived in
light
wood
cotton
aloof marble
water
cedarwood
lemon
fig
rounded english words
fizzle and evaporate
and an
unexpected fleeting scent of winter
brings to mind upstate New York
