The Fiction of Longing/Hotel Room

Personal effects all set

to play a game of hotel-room chess:

the dance of chambermaid and mistress.

These 5 days my oral offerings --

toothpaste, brush, the stalks of hygiene --

I prop the stems in glass

to bloom in the bathroom mirror.

These 5 nights too, I come home late

and proud of conquest,

and she has turned my bedding down

and, insisting on another order,

nested my implements in folds of white.

I read a prime and bridal commentary

on the affairs of my clean mouth.

Does she find the poems set like teeth

sheathed in black lacquer of the desk

flashing all I care for?

How unfolds her plot, the strategic cohabitation

of our empty room?