Lost Motels

On the relegated highways

that tollways and freeways blast
past, some derelict motels still stand--
an American genre.

They're bearded with weeds,
pastel paint blistered,
neon nullified. Oh, how

the salesmen, adulterers,
truckers, con-artists, and loners
lighting out for territories
used to roar in, driving finned
cars, smoking unfiltered cigarettes,
sweat-lines running down shirts
covering their reptilian spines.

The world then was full of
Kodachrome sunshine, cash,
radios, and righteousness. Night clerks
sat in back room like sentries,
sneaking shots of bourbon.

What happened to all those
atlas-thick registers filled
with names in cursive, to all
that red lipstick, all those hats
and wing-tipped shoes?

A jutting metal sign squeals
and rusts. Rats' toenails
click on buckled linoleum.
Presidents Truman and
Eisenhower recline in graves,
and ignored two-lane highways
slumber like cold snakes.

hans ostrom 2023

Edge Noir

They were good, the film-noir movies.
They're like a simple but important meal
cooked well. The noir of life

(and remember that noir is full of light),
however, often lurks around edges. So

you are sitting at a kitchen table,
a low drop-light making your drink
of bourbon a featured performer. You
look up and see and hear a woman
talking on a telephone. She has
one of those great 1950s figures--
stylish, so the clothes still fit,
tight enough to show the goods,
modest enough to repulse
losers, no fear of an ample belly,
one knee turned slightly in.

And there's a cat. Here it comes.
It looks at you and yawns as if to
say not one goddamned thing. It is
then that you say to yourself, "I
don't know where I am or who she
is, but I like my hat, I like
the bourbon, and I just have this
feeling everything is going
to turn out fine."



hans ostrom