NaPoWriMo Days 8 & 9: AWP Silliness

I regret to inform the readership of a lack of poems for April 10 and 11 — the conference/traveling will be my excuse. I promise to write some extra poems so I end up with enough for the whole month. That’s probably cheating.  I’m okay with it.  Here are poems from days 8 and 9, in Denver, at the AWP Conference.

Conference Nightcap

 

The whiskey on my breath

could make my roommate dizzy.

But I pour another inch;

such drinking is too easy.

We conference til the pens

had finally run dry;

my roommate’s contact lenses

were soldered to her eyes.

 

The program in my bag

is thicker than the Bible;

the keynote, at the end,

was like a tent revival.

 

I’ll have just one more sip

then tuck myself in bed.

I do this every year

and still I am not dead.

 

 

 

How I Will Sleep Tonight

 

Between crisp, cool hotel sheets

on the 29^th floor.

 

Snoring the dry, mile-high air.

 

I have eaten and drunk and gossiped.

I have ridden the express elevator

up along its perfect steel spine.

I have slipped the coded plastic card

into its slot turned the handle.

 

The hotel’s white noise

starts a dulling opiate

inside my brain.

 

Near midnight, I teeter on an edge,

and I know the depths will draw me down

and down like breath into

the spider-silk hammock

of not even dreaming.