Jeff Grimshaw

Preliminary Inventory:

Bullet hole decal in the window pane.
Bad dreams to pay for room service. Something
At the bottom of the ice bucket I don’t want to see.

Observations and/or Complaints:

Raze every hotel between here & the harbor &
You still wouldn’t see the ocean. Footsteps on the
Ceiling from guests gone home thirty-five years ago.

Conversation in the Next Room:

The penne is frigging ice cold. I sent it
Back and twenny minutes later here
It comes again with parsley sprinkled on top.

Conversation in the Room on the Other Side:

What am I, a moron? Hey, gimme
Those opera glasses, maybe there’s a
Vogue model across the street getting dressed

A Possible Solution:

The answer is static electricity, sir. The
Missing sock is stuck to the back of your
Shirt. I all but guarantee it.

It will turn up when you put your shirt
On the hanger. Failing that, you’ll encounter
It when getting dressed for dinner one evening

A Questionable Proposition:

The belt is reversible, also the vest. When you
Invert the lenses of your 20/200 prescription
Glasses, you can see through solid walls

A Game of Bingo, Perhaps:

Twist to the east, & lock eyes with the beast
Twist to south, & stare into his mouth
Twist to the west, all your sins now confessed

Twist to the north, & a cold blast of wind
Awakens you. How did I get on this glacier?
Better call the desk & ask for a Bromo-Seltzer

A Comforting Verse from the Gideon Bible beside the Bed:

‘If U R lonely Jerry the Bell Hop
Knows What’s What & can fix U up’
¬—Written in Margin of Psalm 23

Wake-Up Call Request Rehearsal:

Room 413, wake-up call for 6:30, and
Right after send up somebody to untwist
Me something is stuck & stuck good thanks

Some Final Thoughts:

The unanswered question: why are candies
In the vending machines in the hall so cheap
& shabby I have never even heard of these

Brands ‘Best Fine Sweets’ good God I
Have never hated anyone as much as I
Hate the man who picked the drapes

For this room but blessings on whoever
Purchased the waste basket in the bathroom
With the eyeball pattern, you sir are a god

She knows how to crank a rachet &
Tune a car named after herself,
How to be a globe of silver syrup,
Shoot to the top of a glass tube—

How to sprout wings on her heels,
Rocket around the sun in 87 days,
Rubber band a comic strip round a rubber ball &
Toss it thru my open window at 2 AM

Followed up with something involving
A bicycle, before the dew evaporates from
The jungle gym in the playground. Maybe
She will pretend to be a human girl today

Or at least wear cargo pants? Me she tells
To cup my hands, fills them up so she
Can show me my own eyes — are they really
Silver? — in the toxic puddle which is

Herself. Too many adjectives, she smirks
& rebuilds a sentence capable now of
Withstanding “gams” & “gat.” Her shadow
Twangs spilling over these aluminum barrels

Me: —Didja draw the comic strip?
[No answer in her speckled eyes] —& then some motion in the trees as
She spins to retrograde

You’ve never been so lovely
You’ve never been so liquid
Like a sky made of metal
Like a sky full of ashes

You smell like thunder in the meadow
Where we buried your mother’s Atari
Games last summer! Where we buried
A jar full of pennies and marbles!

You shine like a stolen radio
In the broken window of a pawnshop
You ripple in the wind like your sister’s belt
Nailed it to a tree by the buckle

What a morning that was, this is!
I couldn’t, I can’t close my eyes, I feel
Like a potato clawing its way
Through the dirt to look at the sun

You’ve never been so lovely
You’ve never been so liquid
Like a sky made of metal
Like a sky full of ashes

Mercy in 2/4 time
Said she craved pomegranate juice

I saw the window flex
& beyond: 19 different greens

& before: a coffee can containing
19 colored pens!

So who slapped the kitchen counter
Flower decal? & who

Else saw the rippling puddle in
The refrigerator enamel?

— I almost saw but sang (as
Always) ‘I refuse—’

& it rippled on without me. Within
Me it rippled in reverse. (There is

A word for this, I ken, or there
Will be) Mercy Mercy

Trace my fingers with the plum
Pen! Mercy Mercy

How much linoleum
Have you converted inverted conveyed

& translated? O here
Is the sun, awestruck & amazed

Mercy he would like to borrow
Some of your pens

A brush with something crazy
In the back of the barbershop
Some rice that did not cook up right
In the porcelain bowl

We could save the bowl by hanging
A galaxy gone wild (lots of impasto)
Just above it, or (my bad) is that
A frolicking salamander?

Nothing can save the rice
We should try again. Or should we.
Something has driven the parakeet insane
It might be the smell

Of the ancient comic book
Left in the table drawer, microscopic
Fragments of Steve Ditko &
Wood pulp engaging the olfactory

What parakeet could inhale such things
& remain sane? We are always one afternoon
At most from madness. You know
You should keep the lid on the boiling rice

And yet you have to check! Anyone can
Load up the brush with paint
& swirl it around, it does not make you
Van Gogh. It makes me nervous

Though. Brewing a new universe is easy,
Brewing decent coffee is not,
But you can do it if you take your time
& pay attention. The crazy parakeet

Couldn’t do it. Not in the back
Of the barbershop, anyway.
Just watch the traffic lights change, Polly,
& stop your swearing.