from This Town

Hotel Indigo

Three years since the city razed the old Chamber of Commerce Building

on Haywood Street & already the hotel's yellow brick veneer

drips white lyme & loose ropes of caulk from cracks on the west

side & on the north the retaining wall's kicked-out.

On Saturday mornings the tourists sit by the plate glass windows

in the ground-floor café drinking coffee & watching

the cars dip left & down onto the on-ramp for the Expressway

or rise from the other direction slowing to the light.

It's June, high summer, the short-sleeved valets stand sweating

at their little podium beneath the brow of the entryway, where

the circular drive-up aims the cars of visitors gently

into their care, although at the moment everything is still.

In the foyer behind the blue-tinted glass doors, a young woman wearing

a thin cardigan stands with her hands tucked into the back

pockets of her low-slung jeans, her figure is lithe, her hair is long

& fine, one can almost imagine the smell of her skin.

But her expression is ambiguous, it's as if she were not quite sure whom

she's waiting for or why. She checks her phone, she glances back

toward the bar, she checks her phone again, as slightly off-center

in the door's thick glass her image like a ghost mimics her.

4:15pm. Across town at Riverside Cemetery the landscaping crew has

just finished mowing around Thomas Wolfe's grave. Now they're

sweeping the locks of blond grass from the stone.