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  1. Hotel Congress Centennial

    “Hotel Congress” by Nicole Broadhurst

    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.