STONECIPHER, Donna
Model City

It was like slowly becoming aware one winter that there are new buildings going up all over your city, and then realizing that every single one of them is a hotel.
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It was like thinking about all those empty rooms at night, all those empty rooms being built to hold an absence, as you lie in your bed at night, unable to sleep.
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It was like the feeling of falling through the ‘o’ in ‘hotel’ as you almost fall asleep in your own bed, the bed that you own, caught at the last minute by ownership, the ownership of your wide-awake self.
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It was like giving in to your ownership of yourself and going to the win- dow, looking out at all the softly illuminated versions of the word ‘hotel’ announcing their shifting absences all over the city.

Published by Shearsman Books, 2015
Poetry / Urban Studies / Architecture