Slim Light

You’ve been in this room before: last time in Denver when you had to scrape and grind ice off your rearview mirror and they made good on their promise to leave a light on for you.

But this time the light is not on. And this time you’ve forgot they don’t give you extra pillows – not even if you offer to pay for them – so you’re lucky you’ve got Gracie’s wallowing cushion to haul in from the back of the cab: chewed up foam, dog hair and all, so you have something to brace up your miserable hips; then you waste one of their skimpy face towels to get rid of the puzzling syrupy crud on the vanity.

You smoke a lot. Imagine this dull room orange – in flames – the carpet and flimsy bedspread are already dashed with two-inch rust-colored scars left behind by smokers and tokers who have fallen asleep with live ash at their throats. You are especially careful to snap your butts in twos as you finish off a half pack of Marlboros – thinking about quitting cause your lungs are so scratchy. You watch a classic black-and-white Brando flick cause you can’t sleep because you miss your broke-in pillows. Your intent to do some night writing in this favored kind of neutral zone is futile. You blow it off at five a.m. – not a single scratch on your Big Chief pad. So, half-dopey from this worthless all-night squirm, you dawdle next door to Denny’s. Spend an hour slurping hard coffee to see you all the way back home.

Rhonda gives you a free large coke in an insulated cup. For the road. You tip her a buck-fifty cause she’s been so gawddam attentive with re-fills so early in the morning, plus she coughs like she’s about to croak from it’s-a-hard-life-therapy-smoking and she’s made you care about her kids. But you wonder if it’s really true that all three of them have multiple sclerosis.

As you split for home, you back up your truck – real slowly – still uncertain about focusing your new tri-focals in your rearview mirror. You think you’ve hit a speed bump, but truth is, you’ve crushed and killed the three-year-old girl who, just moments ago, had been sassing her mom about the ugly color of the ribbons on her braids.

The kid’d been right outside the door of your room as you packed your bag with the two, nifty, re-cycled two-dollar-and-fifty-cent shirts you’d purchased at the Goodwill Store for Val. And the roll of snapshots of the hideous new addition to the Denver Art Museum, plus at least twenty pages of notes for new poems about how the city is turning to crap since you’d lived here many years ago. And three leftover inedible crusty chocolate donuts from the motel dispenser. And of course, all your psychotropic med bottles alphabetically lined up in your blonde-wood Martha Stewart recipe box.

These days you replay that shiny skin of his – so delicious you want to lick it. Slick young stud – Brando – BrandoBrandoBrando – damn that fucker was smooth. How he said:

i could a been somebody.

They don’t let you watch movies where you are now. But that loop never ends: you coulda been somebody youcouldabeensomebody…

You could a been… shit! What a gallant nose that bastard had, and he did become somebody – hhh! – a tragic fat dead guy – he did become somebody.

They don’t let much light in where you are now.

But they leave the lights on all the time.

Val always made you turn the lights out.

Rhonda writes to you there

Spiel is a born maverick, describes himself as old at 64, and is a diverse full-time writer whose quirky short stories, raw poetry of conflict, and odd bits of art and photography may be seen in a wide array of independent publications such as: Abbey; AlphaBeat Press; Barbaric Yawp; Bathtub Gin; Chiron Review; Iodine; Nerve Cowboy; Parting Gifts & Thunder Sandwich. His most recent chapbooks, 2005, are: it breathes on its own, published by Pudding House Publications, and church floor, by Chiron Review Press.

Email: Spiel

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