hotel
by Matthew Stokdyk
the gideons it reads, in debossed
gold. this one
is nkjv, more deserving
of silver text, no longer so
finely
wrought. hotel bedsides
are no place for a home;
they do not hold
condoms or
diaries or
permanence;
and what
a strange namesake, an
idolatrous judge
who certainly made
a home:
(finely wrought:))
Gideon
had threescore and ten
sons of his body begotten:
for he had
many wives
(reduced to silver,
(tarnished even:))
Gideon
had seventy sons
who were his own offspring,
for he had
many wives
(many wives remain).
in the brevity
of hotel stays
the nightstand stands
empty
save the bible. does
Jesus weep
at the loneliness? does
Paul,
when David climbs in with
Jonathon, arresting him close
like prison bars?
Paul was the traveling type
and also the type to leave
a bible in his wake
trading, he hoped
a transitory nightstand
for a more lasting home.
One of five poems originally published in Anatomy of Our Nightstands, a zine curated by Yusi Liu for the Spring 2021 edition of the Little Book Project in Madison. You will note some recurrent themes in the poems, chiefly angst (originating with me) and certain motifs picked up from a 2018 exhibition Yusi held in her home in Madison. It examined, in part, the functions of and associations between domestic spaces and objects (including the impetus for the Little Book: what one might keep in a nightstand that one keeps nowhere else, like contraception, drugs, personal effects, purely utilitarian objects, etc.).