Modesto Motel
We haggle for a minute
over who pays
for the first night
so she gets a room of her own
in the middle
of a hot California night.
.
Outside the motel,
school boys scoop up the phone change
Dropped by junkies
walking back to the fairgrounds,
The blacktop lot
where license plates
are from fifty states
convene in rows
of bald tires
and dying headlights,
And where the ugliness of
air conditioning
is owned by
no one luckless enough
to sleep this night
Over an ice machine
whose motor grinds and clicks
with the he crickets
singing in the weeds.
Young men
in suits they'll return
by midnight
sip stupid drinks
with umbrellas in them ,
dreaming of bullshit
even as they say it
to teenage girls
added up to needle marks
apologies cannot remove,
this swimming pool
has no lifeguard.
I've been awake
all night in the room,
no sheets on the bed,
ceiling fan
circulating the hot, lived-in air,
the television
burning the farm channel,
a camera pans the set,
barometers tell
anyone awake who can read
where exactly
the earth will
surrender her riches,
diesel trucks arrive,
it's 4 A.M. in Modesto,
there's no more ice,
only the grinding of gears,
it's dreamtime in Modesto.
