I want to stay there,
at the Hotel Mandalay
Which I read about in the newspaper.
I don’t remember where in the world it is,
The Hotel Mandalay–
but I read that if a guest catches flu while traveling,
the staff at the Hotel Mandalay brings a tray
with a bowl of chicken soup,
a glass of ginger ale
and a get well card.
And now that I’ve written its name
so many times, I’ve changed my mind—
I want a job there. I want a reason
to say, every time I’m asked
where I work, “Oh,” I cay say,
“I work at the Hotel Mandalay”
which is not even close
to the worst reason I’ve
kept a job. When the interviewer
asks me why I’m applying
I’ll tell him or her that I must
have this job and not just because of
the kindness of the chicken soup
or even way the word rolls off the tongue
luxurious as chocolate
It’s how it flows onto paper like
writing the word luxurious.
Author Archives: Puff Of Smoke Poems
The Hotel Mandalay
That Ship Sailed
When ordinary life sails away,
becomes a ship in the distance, then gone,
you can finally hear the sounds of the dock.
It creaks in the ebb and flow of waves,
the bump of mighty fish hidden
among the seaweed and the pilings.
Wind and salt have worn away the paint,
left you standing on bare and splintered wood.
You still have choices.
You can fall in love with the dock,
with studying the slivers of paint left behind
with waiting to see what happens next.
You can gather your breath and dive into the sea,
swimming hard, chasing the life that’s already left.
Or turn toward shore—
leave the ship, the dock,
walk into the town.
Buy a basket of bread and oranges
and keep walking till you
reach a new story.
Kittens Used Cars
On the road to the doctor,
radio silence for your nerves,
The Cranberries blasting in my head,
singing about life’s habit of changing every day,
we passed a battered junkyard
with a sandwich board out front.
Buy
Kittens
Used Cars
For Sale Here
is what the sign said.
I considered the possibilities
in waiting rooms for the rest
of the day. Thank you,
thoughtful proprietor
for your kind restraint
in the use of punctuation,
for letting me wonder
what it all means.
Glove Compartment
At the funeral home
in a Rust Belt downtown
we out-of-towners poured in
with the dark and the rain
greeted with hugs
and tears and questions
about our journeys, our hotels,
if we lost our way.
The others, all with GPS,
discussed the tricky turns
near the hotel where navigation
systems failed and sent you
too far, way down past the train station—
then recollected themselves
and asked about the family, said a prayer,
admired the flowers, agreed it was a blessing—
before plotting routes
to the restaurant. And this could easily
have turned into a poem about
how we distract ourselves
from thinking about death or
how we dread being the ones left behind,
or how we all hurry through our lives,
navigating madly towards the same
final destination. But no—I just
want to say how, for a moment,
in the middle of our sad and tired night,
I felt a tiny cozy joy to be
making my way as
a walking anachronism
with my paper maps
well-used and badly folded
stuffed inside my glove compartment.
Mapless At The Crossroads
Go forward, mapless. Give up searching, for directions are everywhere. Watch for patterns: Those moving clouds, the grass clippings dusted across the cobblestones, the pigeons on the cathedral roof, the swirl of seeds the old man scatters from his paper sack, the steps in the dance his little granddaughter dances across the lawn, twirling her skirt wide and dreaming of bells and umbrellas while she waits for him to finish feeding his birds.
Her dance doesn’t look like directions, at first. Skirt swirls wide, fabric billows and collapses on itself and billows out again, over and over as she spins. Shadows dance across her path—clouds, her own body, the small shadows of pigeons as they come to land for those seeds, circle, rise again to the spires.
Make this all the map you need.
Divorce Weather
Espresso and black leather
Slow jazz and Springsteen
Sky is one enormous cloud
Steady grey, occasional rain.
Divorce weather.
Collecting Guitar Picks
You shed them the way other people
drop gum wrappers and opinions–
that is, everywhere.
Today, I found one in the shower.
They gather in shoes and pockets
under chairs and piano benches
on bookshelves and windowsills
in the driveway or the cat’s bowl.
Last summer, I dug one up in the garden.
Almost heart shaped,
they look as if a heart forgot itself, relaxed
with a deep sigh
and stopped holding in its stomach.
I collect them all,
only to hand them back to you
the same way I hand you sandwiches
and stories from your childhood,
curfews and unwanted advice
and money and very occasionally,
jokes you laugh at–
all you take and lose and cast off
things I hold for you
like stepping stones
you can follow forward
going wherever you dream
inside that laughing, mysterious head of yours.
Worry
This morning it’s gone again,
Leaving while I slept
Swept off by dreams.
It comes in waves,
Like dirty laundry and car repairs
Which makes me wonder
About the nature of the negative—
Is it always moving this way?
Building momentum out of sight,
Cresting, crashing, washing itself away again
Leaving me walking the shore
Breathless and relieved,
Amazed at the shells and odd-legged creatures
It left behind—
Horseshoe crabs and calmness
Such sweet and strange-shelled gifts.
Controlled Burn
is the name of the test
on paper and in flames.
Before you,
I never thought about
how people have to learn
to run towards burning buildings,
to put on gear and walk in fire.
This is not a metaphor.
There are classes, days
and hours in rooms at
the local college, the fire hall,
at fires set
just to put them out,
all these tests on paper
and in flames.
Everything can catch fire,
even those tests on paper
can end in flames I pray you pass
with flying colors.
So study hard.
Study very hard.
Recycling The Christmas Trees
Every year,
the first glimpse
startles. Coming home from work long after dark
headlights catch the odd humped edges
sitting in the snow banks along my quiet street.
The glitter surprises in a place
that’s been tinsel-free since last January,
then the dark, unfamiliar bulk
repeats house by house as out of place
as if we’d all agreed to
put out our
elephants and told them
to nap by the
curb.
