The Soft Hotel

i. aoshima



As an alligator weeping in white gloves,

all Thaied up in the penthouse of Bohemian hotels,

great views were frosting in my eyes:

toy isles adrift on sweetened seas,

clouds whiter than the purest snow

crab salad ever eaten

in restaurants of high distinction, clouds

that crown the hummingbirds’ Versailles, birds

of warm emerald and coal

hearts glowing in the throats that warmed me

warmer than the summer.

Thunder peals as I walk through the wild candy fields.

ii. mayaux

Swallowed by the ruby of a Swan,

hair golden as the owl’s eye,

I’m a pink bunny marinating 
in hot mint marmalade

stiller than soda 
flattened by a weak winter sun

still attracting the hornets.

So sugar returns to sugar.

iii. barbier

The skaters know their awkwardness awards them crème brulee, 
heavy to entice
anorexic statuettes 
with bones more fragile 
than the columns
curators love to raid.
A white apricot we call the moon
lights up a soft hotel where people raft settees

through very velvet afternoons,

a scene so pretty it must be sitting under a glass case

with a price I can’t afford.

iv. rimbaud

Morning rose on a soft bed 
of down by the beach.
The skies turn shades of curaçao and cosmopolitan.

Clouds the iridescence of origins— wild western bronze, shamrock, raspberry blues—
bandaging the bluebird streams 
a shadow bridge into the statuary's dreams.


v. Michael

Sometimes I’m a god
and the earth is a gumball
I pop in my mouth.

Sometimes I’m the plush
plucked by the robot
in the arcade.

vi. taymor

I defenestrate masterpieces, lithographs, hoaxes.

The television was my supervision. As a child

I learned to look good breaking glass.

And soldiers posed like those little plastic toys

made in China

and shipped in crispy plastic bags

over dirty plastic seas.

vii. masoch

Everywhere’s a Saigon
and everyone’s a queen
demanding unknown, exact amounts of kiss
on each ring-fingered hand.

I discussed myself with my shrinks all afternoon,
carnivore and prey to my own safari.

viii. boyle

From Lake Victoria to the Waldorf Astoria,
sweeping the nation in search of standing ovations—
slung in fabrics, tied in bows—

a dozen men, two dozen girls, handmade.

Each of us is a limited edition.
Where does your number lie?

ix. unwerth

No adults.
Remote control.

My battery dies
and with it
your love.





x. versace

I was a man of many friends as you may well imagine—
the king of clubs, Cinderella,
Mona Lisa.

Gentlemen, please,
deck your spermatozoa in paisley for every occasion.
Ladies, take my gowns,
designer zebras,
the endangered headdress.

Wear them when you need a sanctuary
and Goa seems too far. 

xi. wolfgang

Let’s do the spa in Spanish tiles.
Let’s feed my creditors to my crocodiles.

xii. klarwein

At noon the pool blushes bluer than cosmetic liquid

or the tufts of spoiled parakeets.

The whales parade across a seltzer sea. See the moths in the wallpaper move?

How trees wake up in lingerie on soft snow skies and spread their limbs like octopi—sixty-thousand arms to serve the sushi of Icelandic and Indian birds, pills that kiss your nerves with delphiniums of bliss:

pineapples, roses, and tits; cherubims in chariots

whipping giraffes through the robin's egg of European seas,

an elegant safari through the stage sets of Rome,

a palace with an open door

and floors of dried chrysanthemums where your feet,

like polished scorpions,

curl with a burn to curl more.

xiii. praxiteles

Each time my heart skips a beat
I give my gift to the world:

art, still as reptiles—
classic action armless form.

xiv. rochester

Deep in the annals of pornography
a woman named Obscidienne
was flipping through a catalog of kings.
The music sounded Asian

but her rug was purely Persian—
amethyst vulva
a pile of shimmering silk
hedged in a mandala
of pubic meditation

more beautiful than anything as unspeakable
and her eyes greener than the stoplights saying Go.

We splurged on a shoe as big as a stadium
made of pink vinyl and python.

xv. petronius

When Bacchus feels the wine complain and shows his sallow fangs—
your eyes waning bloodshot under the bangs—
I soothe your ruffled Mohawk
with words softer than alpaca wool.

Let’s walk downtown heaven:
opal-shell alleyways, pink swimming pools.
Remember when?

Everything old is nouveau again.

xvi. ludwig

The nation whips its silk and thistles like the law,

peaks crowned with cherries and ice that lays

patina on patina on patina.

Snowboarding on the lips of the rose

left for dead at the edge of the Wow

I wept like divorcing stars.

And then a walk,

and ice,

and who knows what?

xvii. nero

Imperial flirtations unfold on the steps to the Temple of Sherbert.
Japan is fondling Italy, Brazilians love Tahitians. India’s enchanting Spain.

How much is too little?
The elevators need Jacuzzis
and the banquets blueprints.
Let the menus be sweet nothings
to a sovereign violet sky I’ll mouth
like poems to the people
and the hermaphrodite’s jalapeno:

cactus steaks served on a bed of sea anenomes
topped with dragon butter in a dodo-blood reduction,
garnished with deep-fried pine cones
and caramelized lilacs.

I'll bring the beds of apricot vinyl
flammable as Courvoisier and backlit by fire.

You bring Kenya
China Chile Sweden

something new to burn.

xviii. lachapelle

Two egrets kiss and the trumpeting fountain
wishes eternity and a wide opening gate—

driving the lime-green Lamborghini with broken brakes
into sky high slices of coconut cake.

xix. verlaine

I stopped a moment at the idol stand—clasped penguins, melting saints,
a face carved into banyan wood.

I was the hood ornament of a dead Bentley.

I did nothing but I moved
from hand to hand of whomever would have me.