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POETRY

Hotel Room

by Holli Carrell

In this room of rectangles,
I am an obscene accumulation;
 

a traffic of veins
from I don’t know where,
 

a weed
of pubic hair.
 

In this pink
camisole, beside the overcoat
 

spread over the chair,
I hold my timetable
 

and watch my body,
an animal,
 

behind glass. Her pace
is my pace, the dark
 

eyes devouring,
the stale yeasty smell.
 

The radiator awakes
and sputters
 

out his insults.
He tells me to put my clothes back on,
 

every article
but the patent shoes,
 

two spit black seeds
on the rug.
 

My body is unlocked
as any door. It isn’t erotic;
 

it isn’t sad.
Fake flowers stand tall
 

in your glass.
I smooth the dimple
 

beneath me on the bed.

Holli Carrell
Holli Carrell is a writer originally from Utah, now based in Queens. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Bennington Review, Blackbird, The Florida Review, Poet Lore, Fugue, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and other places. She has received generous support from the NY State Summer Writers Institute and is a graduate of the MFA program in poetry at Hunter College, where she was a recipient of the Colie Hoffman Poetry Prize and a Norma Lubetsky Friedman Scholarship.

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