Terence Winch

Curley’s Atlas Hotel

My brother got in his car and drove to New York.
He was searching for an old hotel where our mother
used to work. It’s not there anymore, I tell him.
It burned down. My brother never pays me any mind.

 

Our sons come over for a big breakfast, washed down
with ice water and coffee. They are so much more

advanced than we are. I tell them drive carefully.

I tell them to steer clear of ancient history.

 

My mother won’t budge. She stays put. She says
haven’t I everything I need right here? We say
Mom, where are you? Please tell us. Please. We are
looking for your old hotel. The one that burned down.

 

My father never uses bad language. He says: you
dirty name. He says: shite. He says he loves cats,
but our mother doesn’t. He sleeps in a basement
full of cats. We lug him around on a stretcher.

 

Tomorrow, the year comes to an end. Mother,
father, sister, brother, sons, and daughters.
We will step forward in time. My sister promises
to teach me new ways to cook a potato.

 

My wife buys new sheets and a foot massager.
She has a secret plan to escape to San Francisco
and live in a cheap hotel on the water. I remain
at the seashore, floating on a wave of forgetfulness.

Blame Game

Please find someone else to blame
Like that nun in grade school, or your parents, or your boss.

Please forget you ever even knew my name.

 

I know you think life is just a stupid game
and when you lose it makes you very cross.
But please find someone else to blame.

 

I am really sick of all your self-acclaim.
Stop trying to saddle me with your albatross.
And—please!—forget you ever even knew my name.

 

Wealth will never visit you, nor will fame.
All that you are destined for is loss.
But please find someone else to blame.

 

You have no wit. You have no shame.
You are the stationary stone that gathers moss.
Please forget you ever even knew my name.

 

The more things change the more they stay the same.
You will forever be spaghetti without the sauce.
But please find someone else to blame

and please forget you ever even knew my name

Stealing

I want to steal many things. I want those
beautiful grandfather rocks hidden in my
neighbor’s yard. I feel that their strength
could just as well be mine. I want your
cigarettes. It has been so long since
smoke has filled my lungs with that
poison cloud of contentment. Those
jars of homemade strawberry jam:
they should belong to me. I would eat
it all with a spoon, and its sugary mush
would fill me with a rush. I would take
the dawn away from you and have it
all to myself, feeling astonishment at
all that light coming back from its
secret hiding place, night banished.
I would rob you of your faith and fill
myself up with absolute conviction.

The Foreigners

The foreigners next door have left their car lights on.

 

There are cigarette butts everywhere.

 

They are drinking Diet Coke.

 

They have flown here in the rain.

 

They renew their passports over and over.
They turn the ugly things over in their minds all day.
Slights, hurts, rejections no one else
would even notice.

 

No matter where you go, they are there with you.
They sleep on the floor next to your bed in the hotel.

 

A little bit of neon from downtown
illuminates the room. You can’t sleep.
They tell me that in their country
belief in the physical
universe is restricted
to one hour a day.

 

They announce that
there are things we can’t say
that we’ve always known.

 

I see visions of my old neighborhood right outside the door.
I see people crying in the hallways,

in the kitchens, their tears drizzling over the malls


and parking lots, even early in the morning before


rush hour, before coffee, before performance evaluations.

 

The spirits kept us awake all last night with crashing
and moaning in the living room,

finally blowing out the windows in the bathroom.

In our culture, we like to steal things,
but I know you will just give me what I want.
I listen for the sound of a piano,
but everything is quiet. It’s that kind of day.

 

I play solitaire over and over. I have been waiting
twenty-five years for you to call. I am an idiot.
It’s so quiet I think I’m going deaf.
You have disabled pop-ups,
but I don’t like anything to be disabled.
You do not allow smoking.

 

You make me stop joking.

You make me close my eyes
and stumble along the corridor,
everybody watching me. You shake my head
back and forth while forcing me
to recite the Hail Mary.
I feel like the past is demolishing me.

 

One of the great masters from the old country
gave me a recording with the secret of his work
carefully laid out just for me, and it is gone.
I never even got to play it once.

 

We live in a savage place.
Every room is one-third too small,
she says. That’s not true, I think.
Some of the rooms are at least 44% too small.

 

They march back and forth, into the tunnel,
out of the station, into the convention center.
They discuss chicken, steak, and pound cake
but in languages no one, even them, understands.

 

At the citizenship planning seminar,
the numbers will peak today and tomorrow.
The promises are seldom fulfilled.

 

Let’s not worry about all the people they’ve kissed.
Let’s not waste our time on healing and blessing.

Let us gaze upon the moon and stars
and worship there. Let’s call up the Indians we know
for an alternative theory of time and space,
so that we might travel from black mountain
to mesa to desolation and be filled
with thoughts of grandeur.

 

The out-of-town visitors arise from their beds.
They would like to have dinner now
but there is no food. The football game
is a presence that hangs over the whole
city. There is something strange and disturbing
about these people. I left in a very angry mood.
I will not be returning. It is appalling to realize
we are part of a ridiculous plan.

 

I meet the world’s greatest also-ran
in the bookstore at lunch.
Yes, it does feel hot in here, he says.
We are going to have to wise up to that fact.

 

We laugh at the same things. Like for instance
yesterday, the government blew up a comet
a million miles away, and at the very moment
it exploded, the lights down here flickered on and off
and I heard the voice of my mother, a foreigner,
remind me not to start any fires I can’t put out.