Adrienne Rich — Behind the Motel

A man lies under a car half bare a child plays bullfight with a torn cloth hemlocks grieve in wraps of mist a woman talks on telephone, looks in a mirror fiddling with the metal pull of a drawer She has seen her world wiped clean, the cloth that wiped it disintegrate in mist or dying breath on the skin of a mirror She has felt her life close like a drawer has awoken somewhere else, bare He feels his skin as if it were mist as if his face would show in no mirror He needs some bolts he left in a vanished drawer crawls out into the hemlocked world with his bare hands, wipes his wrench on an oil-soaked cloth stares at the woman talking into a mirror who has shut the phone into a drawer while over and over with a torn cloth at the edge of hemlocks behind the bare motel a child taunts a horned beast made from mist