Hotel

for the Frisco Hotel, open during the early pioneer days of Olustee, Oklahoma

 
Open the Frisco Hotel       light dirt in the air a wide rouge shadow full of  

flowing feet       The land is seeking people who lift dust to the sun       root to bedding

caught in rooms       We are large enough for two double beds but our rooms are only

rented       To people in need it made no difference       We are tethered to hotels as we  

tear out the west like a weed       free to risk what the real estate people started in the

ear with the hard tone of excursion trains from the North       For two weeks the air was

a lazy dance shuttling in and out of strangers       Often there would be a hundred or

more mouths       each a room to be filled and filled       all orifice       but everyone was

happy       A mother is of this       a fort who makes us breakfast until we leave       busy

leaning quick out to face the yellow weed of foreign land       this big tub of quail /

and wolf / and fur / and feather       Breakfast is part of a country’s big boom rush as

much as shovels or a fitted wire veil over what we bought       So many guests ate

Mrs. Bentley’s cereal       eggs over easy       then ate real estate entrepreneurs’

promoted land sales with the ferocity of a new       wide hope       Full       land is lined up

for us       as if room is curtains around the map of what we stay inside of