Motel Daze 101
When I was a motel clerk,
I was always something else
When a guest would ask me,
You must be in school,
And I would tell them
I was working on a novel
Or I was a free-lance writer
Or I was waiting
For a fabric salesman job
Because you couldn’t be
Just a motel desk clerk
Running cards and counting
Back change, shuffling keys
And booking reservations.
I’m going to be an actor.
I’m writing a dissertation.
I’m waiting for a Trust.
I’ll tell your story if you
Stand here long enough.
When I Believed in the Traditional God
I believed in vampires, too.
Black ice felt like a case full of bad bets,
left out there, waiting on collection.
Nothing could survive
in the dark I carried.
I asked my father—my minister—
what makes holy water holy.
God, he said. Prayer.
I watched him pour warm tap water
into a pint jar,
seal it tight with fitted tin foil.
After the baptism that morning,
while he was upstairs changing,
I lifted the wooden lid of the font,
dipped out what remained
into a Styrofoam cup,
carried it home,
set it beside my bed.
All that was left
was to find the stake.
Scrapdog loathed welfare rats,
“feminazis,” Obama—
spent his old age muttering
that a country the size of Afghanistan
should’ve folded in a week.
He’d learned his wars young,
eight years old at a mill-house table,
leaning over creased maps with his father,
tracking Europe’s flames,
the Pacific’s meat-grinder crawl.
Now he limped across the tennis court
like a busted relic,
a loaded pistol buried in his gear bag,
a knife ground to a razor
riding in his pocket.
At home every room was armed,
rifle across his lap
as he sat on the deck
listening to the Braves,
eyes sweeping the yard
for whatever threat
he needed to believe in.
The world, he said,
was crawling with enemies.
And he meant it.
I wish I could write like Jack Kerouac,
Like the stringy cheese on the manicotti
At Gepettos, the dining room half empty,
Sponge Bob on one flat screen,
Tattooed NBA giants on the other.
I wish I could wrap all my words
Around a stained steel fork,
Morgan Wallen explaining about
Flyover Americans on the tinny radio.
I wish I could say that Jack
Would hate that crackhead shit,
But who am I in 2025
Wearing old man Wranglers
From the Amazon rack—
Just a son of a preacher.
Just a pasta eater.
Little Joe Cartwright
Sure could whip
Some big guys’ asses.
He had a smile
That was half God
And half curly hair.
And when he walked
He never boot stepped
On the cracks.
