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  1. Hotel Congress centennial

    Ghosting Nadja by Steven Alvarez

    One of the 12 winning poems from our poetry contest with the University of Arizona Poetry Center celebrating our centennial year! Stay tuned for more!

    Ghosting Nadja
    By Steven Alvarez

    arrive Hotel Congress

    & find sun-puddle chortled shiny

    redheaded B. Wright sporting sandals

    ask how many freckles

    B. Wright sez millions

    lifts shirt’s tail & her back—

    sprinkled nutmeg ocotillo

    B. Wright hands a hand-rolled

    number tobacco hairs spilling

    observe mechaniz’d javelina pursuing

    Dillenger & B. Wright writes My

    (desultory) book fails more & that word

    you just used you imposing—you impose yrself

    B. Wright brown coat fur-lined purple

    buttons bedecked in the dark but no collar

    & long wool skirt haunting reception

    sey she loves the stairway & smells delightfully

    rose & the almanac of the dead tattooed

    on left forearm paper skin sprinkled

    w. nutmeg B. Wright that night-blooming

    cereus desert mariposa &—

    & no don’t think look—

    like Dillenger calling myself missed

    Dillenger the Conque—

    . . . humid American mind

    & lupine supine desert chicory . . .

    how much an epic? Fifty, fifty-five? Per square foot of course

    . . . yea Tucson . . .

    dig this I wrote this for the ghost this darksome

    ghost brittle brush brown her fuzzy

    fluff grass hanging blown down

    sprung desert mediocrity—& ghosted this text

    B. Wright hands me a hand-rolled number

    tobacco hairs spilling observe mechaniz’d javelina

    pursuing Dillenger B. Wright writes My (desultory)

    book fails more & that word you just used you imposing—

    you impose yrself B. Wright you—actress breathing

    B. Wright writes & B. Wright writes & that word imposing—

    B. Wright speaks another sort maintain poet make me

    desire to do the . . . of .A.E.TUSED

    B. Wright where’d you get those little red shoes?

    B. Wright write writing too oh yes write arrive

    at Hotel Congress only to find sun-puddle chortled shiny

    redheaded B. Wright sporting sandals ask

    that ghost how many freckles & B. Wright sez

    millions lifts shirt’s tail & sprinkled nutmeg ocotillo—

    B. Wright sells Sonoran hotdogs at the ballpark

    yea Tucson—B. Wright writes B.

    Wright brown coat fur-lined, purple buttons

    arrive Hotel Congress