Jack Henry

the thinness of walls, 1

in a room to my left two old queens fuck with rabid intensity,
fearless in their volume, unrepentant to the thinness of walls –

i had watched them enter their room as i stood in the doorway of my own,
smoking one last cigarette before my fade –

“there’s always room for one more,” the short one said to me –
i smile and nod and look at the ass of the pretty one –

a pseudo cowboy and a punch-drunk blonde whisk past,
enter a room to my immediate right, bound for calf roping replays
and bucking bronco indiscretions –

caught in the middle of homosexual histrionics and a heterosexual rodeo,
back on the road, halfway to Phoenix, in a land where things rarely
change and lightning rarely strikes twice –