Hotel

The maid, bent like a paperclip

isn’t here or is here.

Her plastic rosary

hanging from the neck of an empty Windex bottle.

On the wall

a pastel street scene and Barbara Bush.

Under a layer of dust

the carpeting is patterned with fleur-de-lis’

a fitting flag

for the aphasic dolphin

who helms the sad France of this slum.

Periodically, you’ll hear a TV turn on or off.

On a scalloped paper coaster

you write a psalm.

It starts,

Standing with one hand to smooth your hair

at a small window green with rain

and ends with an abandoned 55’ Plymouth Savoy

near the Golden Gate bridge.

A guilty wind

disturbs two feral cats, mid-coitus in the alley

which are really your shadow

which is really the ink held in these letters,

which is really a roundabout way of asking

will you be my stranger?

_______________________________________________

Matt McBride is a relatively recent graduate of Bowling Green State University’s MFA program. His chapbook, The Space between Stars, was released last March on Kent State’s Wick Poetry Press. Additionally, he has recently published work in Alice Blue, Cranky, Phoebe, Poet Lore, and The Toledo City Paper. He works as an instructor at Bowling Green State University, writing in the small margins his life allows.