Marriage (motel)
by Laura McCullough
Inland, just west of Atlantic City,
old motels stand hunched
as if ashamed, people
inside propping them up. No one
told me about the architecture
of sorrow, how expensive
it is to build, how long it takes
to tear down. East as far as you
can go here in Jersey is the ocean
in which swimming
and drowning
sometimes look the same.
I love a conceit (the unfortunate name for an extended metaphor), and this one is marvelous.
The poet tells us what is coming in the title--we will be getting a description of a motel and a marriage. The fact that there is just one description, that of a motel, is a little surprise. It is up to us, the readers, to make the shift from the physical imagery of the motel in New Jersey to a marriage. Neither are in good shape.
It's such a short poem, and yet we are given so much. That last image (a call-back to Stevie Smith's "Not Waving But Drowning") is stunning. We know things are not good, but that last image describes to us just how bad--life and death--with a chilling addition: neither the particpants nor the onlookers can tell the difference between joy and destruction.
The poet, Laura McCullough, has 3 more Marriage ( ) poems in the same issue of Posit. I highly recommend clicking on the link at the top of this page and reading the other poems. They are just as strong.
Comments