In These Rooms

Frank Stanford

after Bemardo Bertolucci

At some time the dead must come back for a few days
in the country.
For now is the season when the living
Let darkness spread its butter over their hair,
And soon the rain will be poured
Into the slime we call our eyes,
Poured down the deep sockets where the slugs roam,
the branches wayward with sap.

It will be distributed soon
Like ointment by nymphomaniacs.

At some time the dead will be recognized
As high school sweethearts who went mad in the barns,
Old girlfriends dressed like a night in the forest,
Dressed in the ruins of mist and sensitive flyrods.

Nevertheless, the dead, who only intend to stay a short while.

In the Hotel of the dead there is an age-old policy
against these things:

Wives and old coaches,
Ouiji boards and certain cheeses,
Belts long enough to reach overhead pipes,
For now is that time of year when the hardy
Start coughing.

The management has its own garden of Thumbelina
To solace the bereaved
And in a certain time of year
Mistresses are taken to weed the grounds of wreaths.

The critics have called it a hospital where the doctors
are forbidden to cut,
A whorehouse mopped with sanitary napkins,
And a convent with a trapdoor,
A door leading to a cemetery, a library of dreams.

The Hotel of pencils, loose lips, and small titties.

Where there is a constant groaning in the adjoining room,
Like an owl in the woods.

In these rooms death grows
On the shady side of the mountains like ferns
And that isn't right either
Because death is also sagegrass, belladonna, and rose hips,
Really, can you imagine a Hotel for the dead.
An inn for cold biscuits,
Windows fogged over from evening
Constitutional spiked with saltpeter.

A Hotel like a greenhouse without dirt
Rooms and rooms of crumbs and starlight,
Drawers hard to loosen but filled with shoelaces
and dark glasses,
Bibles thick as pig meat.

There is a night man with a box of hideous keys
And a prowler admitted on sight
Who uses black gloves and spools of electrical tape.

Growing near a fountain on the mezzanine
The tree of everlasting life, wilting
And surrounded by the spoors of patron saints.

In the Hotel of the dead the bellboys must be tipped
But your suitcases are light as newspaper.

The keyholes are rusted from tears
And caulked with contact lenses.

The ceiling is an illusion of twine
And suffering from psoriasis.

The elevator is manned by a woman with pliers.

From there the postcards of the great masters have been
sent in the mails
And returned, slipped under the door,
A homosexual must have tried on each shirt
And kept all twelve, a maid must have believed in voodoo,
A seamstress must have grown crazy.

A Hotel like a greenhouse of dark light bulbs
Where the wind is like a fireplace,
Water coming to a boil.

And the mirrors in the bathrooms with their broken constellations
of pus.

The hours in ambush like medicine in a dark bottle,
Whereas the week-ends are pillow fights in a Catholic orphanage.

Hotel of love and love the crack of light,
Hotel of tragic books and gladness to be alone.

A lamentable good time,
A pair of pants mourning your swollen body.
Impotent professors losing weight on French toast,
Old yolk hard as plastic
Locked in the dirty water of the forks.

And nothing is left of feathers but rich soil and points of blue glass.
Something is made something is lost.

In the Hotel of the dead guests are still made welcome.
Rooms opening up to a balcony with a view are still available,
Rooms that are shared, rooms that are forgotten.
In the Hotel of the dead guests clean their own windows
with beautiful rags and Benedictine.

In the Hotel of misfortune the guests cannot strike a match.

And death has a secret motor
Furnishing power to the revolving door.
A taxi is hailed, a hearse will arrive.

But the local market is kind enough to make deliveries
to the old.

Sacks of magazines with soggy bottoms,
Cans of dogfood, ninety percent meat,
The pensioners can warm on the radiator, stew
spiced with gunpowder.

And for those too old to open cans, there are frozen fish,
laxatives, and denture creme.
Silence, the tonic of death, which is peddled off as a miracle drug.

In the Hotel of the dead, something smells. Hotel of love,
Like a woman with an infection.

In the Hotel of the dead, there is a lobby
Where the miserable can wait,
There is a young man, blind from birth, suddenly closing
an accordion.

Ginny Stanford