Hotel Congress

By Nicole Broadhurst

Liberty’s mint of milk verdigris at night.&                                                               
What if a bar were a field where love

                                                                sprung from a chair, invisibly—- & the

extinct turtles’ backs of locked

                                                     long hexagonal honeycombs cathedrals’ clear eyes

streaming the lights of Earth

                                                  in kaleidoscopic salt?    

We were warned the city may sing when the sun returned

& never again will you say that never again

will that sweetness deliver its pillar, rounded in sighs

birds so shortly sleeping greeting morning at afternoon—-

Lobby of lily-pads

                                  thick-sequined gold hot neon-pink mohair-white!

In that light the shadows are blue. And dawn come to the

terrace of tiny birds throwing the diurnal net

a beak in the hand of familial eyes, smiling

What if love were a bar in the tiger-light of summer evenings year-

round-day-in-day-out 100 years?

Then riders were reality, in no need of wishes.

                                                                              & Pegasus, Say—-  

What if a hotel were all who stepped there

brought to a congress?

An iron-skillet of eggs, a 4-posted bed

a cowboy-bar & disco, out back the radio & the barber shop

thrown into a ballroom, the sleeping bearing down overhead

to pool into the cup.