Anguila rides Castoria, venetian
blinds shiver on the 3rd floor
of the Honeymoon Hospice.
Thirty-seven hours without a nod.
Her vocabulary drained away, the place
she might have been at when she first
formed an impression of love as luck,
and dumb luck at that, was enough
like the place she’d imagined when he reached
behind the screen to caress the humid air
between her knees.
Not completely, but close enough.
No room service, no maid service, no wake-up call.
One settled where one slept.
She incorporates the hotel’s noisy restaurant
into her bone-weary dream.
A meandering song, framed in black shellac,
its drifting melody never quite resolving
but circling, paralleled in a peculiarly liquid guitar line
that repeats and falls off and repeats again
till the stutter of the drop-away
becomes the pattern’s anticipated moment.
A plate of figs, a wide spatula of sizzling beef,
a small glass of some autumnal cloudy juice,
she hears them being offered, turns her head
to sink deeper to the pillow,
the linen under her cheek cool as a low-tide dune,
emerging moonsoaked from the sea.