TWO POEMS

Poem for Hotel Soaps

Maybe every choice is in some way false,like whether to wonder or worry,or feel alive or alone in Clevelandor Memphis or any standard double queentrying to unwrap a tiny hotel soap.There’s always another one waitingin the dish like a stale communion wafer,or anas if to remind me I don’t fitinto this world either. As if whispering,as housekeepers push past piloting schoonersof towels, more floats in the endless paradeof exploitation you hope leaving ten buckson a credenza fractionally absolves you of.Is the great obstacle anger or fear?Am I more straw or man?Under what circumstances are youprepared to give everything away?Tiny hotel soaps rarely smell the wayI hope, instead like an older generation’sfailed ideas of beauty, a living roomI’m ashamed to feel luckyto have avoided growing up in,a square of orphan meadowleft on the roof of an office buildingentirely for rain and bees.