Tranq

1 Minute Read Time

Exterior of the Sunset Motel. The name of the motel is spelled out in caps letters on the roof of the building, which is dilapidated. — Photo by Mike Beaumont on Unsplash

Your brother can go to hell
for the hell of it and have no choice
but a motel on Route 6
north of Scranton, the wax paper bags
lined up on the king-size bed.
Forget coal, the damned until doomed
and fallow shafts
in strike songs about strong men, this is now
the abysmal substance,
not a miner but a moonlighting
IHOP waiter the underworld figure
who guarantees your brother
his hard-earned groan
of satisfaction
will be fleeting yet bottomless
as a cage elevator. A horse
sedative gives the fentanyl
its extra kick. But xylazine
blackens and pits
the needle sites, ruins his whole arm
and won’t stop there,
what your own folk heroes loved
doing to the hills, history mostly
sinew and muscle, one gouged-out life
after another.

David Moolten

David Moolten’s last book, Primitive Mood, won the T. S. Eliot Prize (Truman State University Press, 2009). His chapbook The Moirologist won last year’s Poetry International Winter Chapbook Competition and is forthcoming. He lives in Philadelphia.

Return to top of page

Search