Room service, please

The Butler Model of Tourism

I keep coming back here year after year,

black valise with a busted zipper,

spring-shot lobby divans drained of color,

to press crisp bills into Monte’s

trembling hand, rattling around in his

thread bare uniform with the rest of his

clattering bones and ease myself onto

this sagging bed to listen to the sound

of his creaking cart and scuffling feet

recede into absolute silence down

the dimly lit hall broken only by

the lively conversation between the

man and the woman I can just make out

in the water stained fresco above my head

the two of them lost in a light-hearted

row as if I can’t hear their bald appraisals,

shockingly frank in this wall papered room

with its musty corners and milky windows,

disagreeing only on the degree

of my incremental progression through

The Butler Model of Tourism;

the man making a half-hearted case for

Rejuvenation, the woman straddling the  

thin line between Stagnation and Decline.