Hook

buy me a last drink          something cold 
& neat                  take me 

through the lobby with the knowing 
lamps just lit                    pry me loose 

a stuck penny                   I’ll wipe my boots
on your nagging doubt                & later when you lace 

your shoes          overtip the maid           vanish like fog
my fingers will invent you           on hotel stationary      crisp 

lined paper shoulders     eyes black as my fountain pen 
hours pass           sometimes weeks             I wait 

for the hum of the elevator          click of the key card 
do you hear the acorns dropping on the roof? 

knocking             like caught fish                I am barrel-bound 
my knees against            my mouth          open for the hook 

you roll your sleeves up              this is work
the fragile casting of the line     our small acts of betrayal

I sit with the ice cubes melting               what I wanted never mattered

Author of the article

Rebecca Faulkner is a London-born poet and arts educator based in Brooklyn. Her work is published or forthcoming in journals including New York Quarterly, Solstice Magazine, SWWIM, The Maine Review, CALYX Press, CV2 Magazine, On the Seawall, and Into the Void. She is the 2022 winner of Sand Hills Literary Magazine’s National Poetry Contest and the 2021 Prometheus Unbound Poetry Competition. Rebecca was a 2021 Poetry Fellow at the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. Her debut collection is forthcoming in the US and the UK from Write Bloody Press in March 2023. View more of her work at https://www.rebeccafaulknerpoet.com/poetry.