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.
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