Your Vacation

The towels and the key give thanks –
so does the hotel elevator
and who might surprisingly step out

when the door opens at your floor –
mothers and children,
the beautiful woman who never speaks –

and the soft, transparent water of course
that departs, on cue, for your hands
and the drains beneath and yet keeps on coming –

and the pool is more than grateful for
your presence – there couldn’t be sun
and music without you –

it might not even be summer –
as for the bar, drunkenness was disparate
and sad and now, it smiles wider

than the umbrella that floats in your pina colada –
the mattress can’t get enough of you –
your sunburn would be lost without the rest of your body –

and then the bill arrives, checkout,
even as you’re leaving
you’re being welcomed all the way.

 

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in the Homestead Review, Harpur Palate and Columbia Review with work upcoming in the Roanoke Review, the Hawaii Review and North Dakota Quarterly.

Ira Joel Haber was born and lives in Brooklyn. He is a sculptor, painter, writer, book dealer, photographer and teacher. His work has been seen in numerous group shows both in the USA and Europe and he has had 9 one man shows including several retrospectives of his sculpture. His work is in the collections of The Whitney Museum Of American Art, New York University, The Guggenheim Museum, The Hirshhorn Museum,The Albright-Knox Art Gallery & The Allen Memorial Art Museum. Since 2006 His paintings, drawings, photographs and collages have been published in over 230 on line and print magazines. He has received three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, two Creative Artists Public Service Grant (CAPS), two Pollock-Krasner grants, two Adolph Gottlieb Foundation grants and, in 2010, he received a grant from Artists’ Fellowship Inc. in 2017 & 2018 he received the Brooklyn Arts Council SU-CASA artist-in-residence grant.