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Alison Milonakis
HIGHWAY HOTEL MORNING
There is a weariness here,
when one more clandestine affair
turns up pocket debris
gleaming in the virgin morning.
The silver of keys, a fistful
of nickels,
clanking against various nightstands,
making their detached music.
These men don't mask their repulsion
when fingering the knotted scar--
a gleaming crescent moon,
pearly below the ripe pillow of her breast.
A remembrance gift-
a fear instilled display of pimp power.
He of the Saint Afra pendant,
dime store cologne,
teeth gray as ashes.
Though he body might cry out
its blissful ignorance rhapsody
on seedy sheets
ivory thighs part like the sea of Moses,
hesitant, shy as kittens.
No fuck welcome
not an ounce of beauty found
in the 3 AM floozy light
of a highway hotel morning.
She is a vessel to fill,
often wonders how it came to this,
why nighttime has turned nemesis
depleting all she ever was,
all she was thought to be.
At 15 she hit the streets,
cursed her suffering
flung regret
steered clear of gutter garbage,
aimless sidewalks
keeping her back, always to the
unforgiving moon.
Her grandmother once told her
moon was woman,
when life held normalcy,
routine.
The moon was cycles, pull of the tides
everything glowing beauty
basked in milky liquid light.
Now, the one beside her emptied
or spent,
7 minutes shy of the full final hour,
she shrugs, places pantyhose in pocketbook
reapplying kissed off lipstick,
furious red.
She sees it all in flashes of crimson red.
The color of her wrath, or
a pouring out
of these impossible wounds.
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