Night in Winnemucca, NV

Helene has a broken ankle and a scooter. Her lobby’s full of
unmasked men. In the lot, construction trucks beep, casino and liquor
signs blink. The bedside lamp’s out, the plug buried behind the bed, headboard
screwed into the wall. My cheesesteak and fries stew in their own sweat after
the slow check-in, the lamp debacle, refusing to admit the masked
maintenance man who’d come to rummage in the bedclothes and fix the light.
After the soggy sandwich and two beers, I unscrew a bulb from the
desk lamp by the door to try beside the bed. I text Helene in her
room off the lobby, Presto! It’s fixed. Leonard Cohen’s Chelsea Hotel
plays in my mind: I need you. I don’t need you, and all of that jiving
around. The light shines on the stiff spread. No one’s giving me head. Curtains
luff from the window unit’s heat, Winnemucca frozen outside. I
stretch out, needing nothing, feet freed from boots, joints loose after the long drive.

Subhaga Crystal Bacon is a gender-Queer poet living in a rural community in northcentral Washington on unceded Methow land. She is the author of four collections of poetry including Transitory, recipient of the Isabella Gardner Award for Poetry, forthcoming in the fall of 2023 from BOA Editions. Her recent work appears or is forthcoming in 45th Parallel, Rogue Agent, The Indianapolis Review, and Rise Up Review. She is an avid hill-walker and lover of nature who spends most days contemplating what's moving, growing, or arriving around her.