Nothing Says Apocalypse Like a Hampton Inn Parking Lot
Soft Landing Summer
At the Hampton Inn half a mile down
Highway 301 from the Winn Dixie
where I pick up a bottle of cheap
Chardonnay, next to the Wendy’s
where the cashier gives me extra chili
with my order, the rental car thermometer
says it’s over ninety in the shade at dusk
and I pull in careful to avoid lawn chairs
dotting parking spaces where guests
sit shooting the shit, drinking Bud Light,
wearing matching red family reunion tees.
The pool’s closed—fence is busted, says
the desk clerk on check-in, and from
the window of my room I have a perfect
view of dragonflies swooping the face
of the deep end where the water glows
aqua, perfect but for half a white plastic
lounge chair sunk to the bottom. Dade
City was home to the largest citrus
processing facility in the world until hard
freezes moved the oranges South and
closed the Pasco plant so now the fields
are empty and hazy in almost-evening
July sun past church signs: Son Screen
Protects Against Sin Burn and Jesus is
Coming Are You Ready? Please Be
Ready, as if your Uber is one minute
out and you’re waiting with the piles
of USA Today in the lobby, headlines
shouting “Is This the End of Summer
Vacation as We Know It?” The article
saying you can’t escape the orange—
swaths of tangerine and traffic cone
on maps indicating record highs.
Heat domes. Catastrophic floods.
Baseball-sized hail. Tornadoes.
There are no anomalies here tonight—
just the regular oppressive humidity
of July curling my hair extra tight,
just the generosity of strangers
out in the parking lot offering me
a plastic cup and a light for my
Parliament, which I smoke sitting
on the curb still warm from the sun
dipping behind the dwarf palmettos
and the mosquitos humming with
blood and kindness of those who
ferry us from isolation to abundance.
We Must Test Generalizations Across Categories of Objects
Pete says isn’t Switzerland where wood-
peckers come from? when I tell him one
is building a house in my house—which
isn’t totally accurate: it’s pecking deep
holes in the wood trim on the corners
but that sounds less poetic. I’ve just
sent him photos of a swank artists’
residency at the foot of the Alps
where each resident gets their own
architecturally significant treetop cabin.
I mean, these places are off the chain,
I tell him—like something out of Domus
or Wallpaper* made with panels of
accoya, glass, galvanized steel—
temples of ergonomics and minimalism:
archetype of the cell that has been
stripped down to its sparest expression,
writes the architects or one of their interns,
though I’m not sure incarceration is the best
evocation for the muse but a Swiss cell
sounds better than this woodpecker
—its constant knocking is making it hard
to write, I say to Pete, though I could only
joke about it until insulation started dotting
the lawn and now I have to find someone
to call to replace all the wood with composite
because none of the shiny CDs or strips
of reflecting tape do crap to repel
the woodpecker, which drums all day
no matter how many rocks I toss
at the side of the house, which now
resembles a found-object visionary art
environment. This bird is resolute, I tell Pete—
it has a mission—like Mormons or episodes
of Star Trek, which Gene Roddenberry
hoped to use to demonstrate what humanity
might develop into if it would learn from
lessons of the past—most specifically by
ending violence—which means we have
learned nothing since 1966: the year America
experienced its first modern mass shooting
at the University of Texas, and US deaths
in Vietnam more than tripled. But NASA
conducted five Gemini space missions and
there was the first permanent implantation
of a partial artificial heart into a person,
making someone part alien. Roddenberry
was one of the first humans to have his
ashes carried into earth’s orbit. The Starfleet
missions he dreamed up were sometimes
scouting or diplomatic or humanitarian or
star-mapping, and I tell Pete my horoscope
says imagine yourself as an envelope.
What does that even mean? I ask him.
Built to carry missives? Pocket for bills?
Torn open? Sealed shut? Messenger
instead of message? The miniature
mechanical bird that emerged every hour
from a trap door to cuckoo in my long-dead
grandmother’s clock, Black Forest style
above her kitchen table: a small wooden
house, weight-driven, with cast iron pinecones
hanging from chains like testicles. But I’m not
the timekeeper—the bird or its vocalization,
the USS Enterprise, any kind of container
or urn, pretend-neutral like Switzerland.
I want to be the actual time, or that artificial
heart, ticking, relentless, and the woodpecker
—tat-tat-tat— tat-tat-tat—is still at it.
