El Vacancy

Drawing a blank then
where a sloe-eyed madonna
performs a striptease to a recitation of
the Communist Manifesto

the swaying palm trees keeping time

like the rail of banjos at
the Needle Beach Medicine Show
reading west to east
w/poems tacked to the walls

the inventory & the pace

shattered chrome & clarinets
knocked from the loop
w/a bent trailer fin

buried in dry leaves on the bottom of an
empty swimming pool
at the Deep Blue Motel

a shadow in the window there
doing the wah-watusi

as one untouched by tears