Peace Out

Close the hotel curtains
Because your act is up

No more dogs in the road on Sunday evening
No more taxis or angry police
No more muffled calls to prayer
No more gratitude in our response

No more flies to tell you
Skippy's not asleep

No more whispering neighbor children
No more headless surprises
draining from the swing set

No more hotel curtains
One more travel song

Ironing Shirts on a Friday Night

Steam coiling around his shoulders

The man irons without precision
Twenty-three or forty-three
He always presses too hard
Boiling seams
Billowing steam from under the collar
Unrelenting
He wishes it would burst into flames
but it only twists oddly

So much freedom in the greeting of a locked door
Do you really want to be looked after?

Pause to observe the wrinkle
Tilt the iron back slowly

Then the midnight train
will rattle the ironing board
Grinding banshee metal from the tracks
Seals the evening
He pulls the plug
and disappears