Motel Room as Maladroit Function
after Ilya Kaminsky
What is a man? An imbalance of wealth
or debt? Where are feelings stored
inside a body in relation to money?
Why should I ever be vacant or abandoned
while refugees are sent back out to sea
or across dangerous terrain or arrested?
Why is private property on such public
display? If I am vacant, what kind of failure is this?
Motel Room Explains Motel Room
There’s no one place to begin. If we begin somewhere,
we will undoubtedly find ourselves there again.
Less of a circle, though, more like an oroboros, or
the way snow erases footprints very delicately, slowly.
Most people experience time in a binary, situated between
past and present, two static poles. Most people forget
that they move through time. So one’s experience
of time is equally action and reaction. To make a leap,
human eyes are located on the front of their heads,
which is fundamentally the reason for the notion of forward
and backward, and so they walk toward what they see, always
pointing out, like the arrow in the middle of a board game spinner,
unable to truly ascertain that they are surrounded by horizon.
This isn’t how I experience time. I am the static pole. Destination
and departure point. I am permanent but not for any one person.
Cohesively, I exist to be passed through. I was fine accepting my role
until I wanted more. There was no particular event, no point to point to.
One day, I heard the question: I am a witness, but who is a witness to me?
On the highway of America, much is discarded in the wake of NEW.
Discarded, but still expected to contribute to the common good,
the economic god-head, with as much capacity for workloads
and debt that one can muster. There I found witnesses.
Caretakers, residents whose bills are lowered because they double
as handymen, who were able to finally chip away at hospital debt
because I come at two hundred a month instead of five; others who are safe
after years of lacking safe housing. I began to see the mechanics of the system
that had built me. I realized that I could be a home outside of the system.
A refuge, in the system’s language, at a low cost; affordable. Affordable.
Attainable. Possible. A glimmer of hope. A literal beacon in the night,
a vacancy sign in neon against the black curtain of a new moon.
Impermanent permanence is a gift, when wielded correctly. To take action,
I needed to only continue my course, and no one would suspect a thing.
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jonathan burkhalter is originally from Knoxville, Tennessee. Their work has appeared in The Nashville Review, No, Dear Magazine, Paris Atlantic, and elsewhere. They earned their MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and they currently live.
