“Door Knobs #1” © Bonnie Matthews Brock

 

Suite

Like faces passing briefly in the mirror
the suite catches our bodies buzz in and out
unlike the traces of faint smoke on our clothes
that forever follows up wherever we go.

In bursts we clamber into the room at odd hours
like hot lightening when the world sleeps,
trying to regain ourselves with quick showers
before filing out in droves, leaving the room alone.

By the time check out pulls us back awake
crushed cans and empty bottles litter the tables,
stained white towels line the bathroom floors,
but any cash has been scraped away clean.

And we abandon our lonely suite
without a thanks or a single wave
as we struggle out with our bags
and put the distance between us.

 

Chuck Harp is a writer and winner of the Mad Cave Studios Talent Hunt. He has released two poetry collections with Unsolicited Press. In 2021 he released an audio-poetry project, Katcheen Tongues.

Bonnie Matthews Brock is a Florida-based photographer, as well as school psychologist. She enjoys capturing raw single-capture photos of a wide variety of subjects, and learning and experimenting with shooting techniques such as long-exposure and intentional camera movement, as well as with editing methods. You can find Bonnie’s images on the covers of publications such as Ibbetson Street, Poesy Magazine, and Wild Roof Journal, and on the pages of Oddball Magazine, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, Ember Chasm Review, Beaver Magazine, and Unstamatic. Her works are archived at institutions such as Poets House NYC, Brown University, University of Buffalo, and Harvard University.