to get back

[Manna]

With the sleeping baby
in an opened duffle bag
at the Hotel Tropicana
after the phone call
with all the screaming
about the final decision
she sniffles
against his warm forehead
and puts a bottle in the bag.

With slanted handwriting
over a napkin’s logo
at the red felt covered table
the dealer with the wrinkles
and the crow-wing eyebrows
writes a room number.

On knees and elbows
under the slapping belly
of the sweaty client
from wholesome Omaha and
after the first three
she holds in the pouring out again.

With a few dewy dollars remaining
at the bus station
in Furnace Creek
with the stirring baby
on her wobbly shoulder
she buys a pint of milk.

[Gullivor]

Manna,
I enjoyed this!
I too have visited the "Hotel Tropicana" in Ft.lauderdale years ago. I met this girl at the Patio bar and we took our drinks and sat on the pool chairs to be alone. When our drinks were done I went to get up to get a few more for us when she offered to get them, I gave her the money and waited....she came back and we talked and drank...next thing I rember is waking up on the pool lounge chair and the girl was gone...so was all the money in my walet and my shirt! I had a hell of a time getting home a few miles that day.
A few years after that my new girlfriend at the time tended bar there. She was tough, wild and beautiful my love was blind. Although she works or drinks there no more she never got out of the "Tropiciana Hotel".

Not many people that go to the Tropicania leave it alive.

Im glade your friend did!
Is she happy now?

[Manna]

Hi Gullivor,
This is an entirely made up story. I didn't even know there was a real Tropicana Hotel.
I'm glad you enjoyed it though.

[Cate]

That's a great name - the Tropicana, you can imagine all sorts at the Tropicana from drug dealers to movie stars to buyers of babies.

I'm not sure if I'm seeing the story right Manna - this is what I think I see. I young girl has gone to the Tropicana to 'sell' her baby, she meets the person who has arranged the transaction downstairs and they give her the room number of where to go. I love the description crow-wing eyebrows, btw. She can't she sells herself instead and with the small amount of earned money leaves with the baby - In reading it this way for her I feel temporarily relieved for them but anxious for their future.
The second way I could see, but not so much, would be the dealer being a pimp and this being the girls first job, the person on the phone being a boyfriend or girlfriend trying to talk her out of it but desperation wins out. If I read it this way I want to slap the silly girl and drag her out of there.

I'm going to re-read later and see if I see it differently.

[lizzytysh]

The way I read it was without quite as much involved. In my reading, the argument was with the pimp over price, expectations, or whatever. The baby was part of the picture early on in a loving, though sad, way. She finally resigned herself to the assignment [trick] and the dealer was the middle man, giving the info as to whose room to go to... though he could be the pimp, too... but the phone call would be difficult, while he was at the gambling tables.

The part that seemed out of sync with me was how the little money resulted in its buying power.


~ Lizzy

[Manna]

Hmmm. It looks like my experiment with writing almost entirely with prepositional phrases didn't do so well. There was more going on in my imagination that I didn't write for fear of over explaining, but I think I let that fear get the best of me this time.

I think this poem starts better than it ends too. Maybe I'll try to fix some of it.

[lizzytysh]

And I left something out in my final sentence ! The idea I tried to convey was how little money she apparently got, gauging by its buying power.


~ Lizzy

[Manna]

I figured that's what you were saying. She did have to buy a bus ticket, plus pay for her time at the hotel, but I don't know what the going rate is for ...

[Gullivor]

I think you did a fine Job Manna!

You brought the reader into the writing and they became a participant in it.

[Cate]

Hmmm. It looks like my experiment with writing almost entirely with prepositional phrases didn't do so well. There was more going on in my imagination that I didn't write for fear of over explaining, but I think I let that fear get the best of me this time.

I think this poem starts better than it ends too. Maybe I'll try to fix some of it.

Ah I didn't even notice - very cool. I think you must have done a good job with it if we didn't stumble over them and wonder why you were writing like that.

I thought that the bottle was interesting in the poem as well - in the first stanza I wondered if it was - mom's courage or babies milk, I liked when the poem came back to the bottle again at the end this time for sure being baby's milk. The phrase that I didn't care for was wobbly shoulder - makes her sound weak and I'm still wondering at dewy dollars, part of me thinks dew as in fresh start. ( I tend to think of dew in a different way, so that's interfering).

[Manna]

Refer you to the dew at the delta at the alpha and the omega?

I totally agree about wobbly, and I think I left it in out of elementary laziness. It's hard to find a preferably 2-syllable word that can describe a shoulder as just barely capable. You don't want it too flimsy, but you don't want it too strong either. Something like corrugated cardboard. A corrugated shoulder just doesn't do it for me. Maybe an item of clothing will help, like a spaghetti strap. Hmmm. Thinka thinka. Think right out loud. la la la.

ps. I love fried spam.

[imaginary friend]

'slender shoulder'?
'skinny shoulder'?

...she seems quite vulnerable... and very young... 16?

[lizzytysh]

"skinny shoulder" does it for me. Given the task, it's a lot to bear up under and it definitely conveys vulnerability and even neglect of self in lieu of attention to other, 'more important' matters, such as milk for one's baby.


~ Lizzy

[Cate]

Refer you to the dew at the delta at the alpha and the omega?

I dew, I dew but it dews not seem to go with money for me.

I have never had spam - what kind of animal does it come from?

Slender shoulder is good.

haha - I just realized what you meant by spam - there's some kind of weird spam thing going on here.

[lizzytysh]

Narrow, bony, or even thin would work, too.