The Winning Poems

ROOM 225 - HOTEL RIALTO
Pauline Suett Barbieri

I found this poem in my room this morning
in the top left hand drawer
of the cabinet next to my bed.
It smelt of love and mothballs.

I lifted it up.
Some rotting Spanish adjectives fell away.
Carrying it gingerly to the open window
I shook it out over the wrought iron balcony.
Some purlised verbs dropped
onto the ledge below and stayed there.
A hungry Barcelonian pigeon
feathered cobalt blue, pecked at them curiously.

The poem had a sort of hole in the middle
perhaps a neck
which had, at one time, been darned
with black thread, caught up in the Twenties.

One knitted sleeve, red, was slightly longer
than the other.
The rib of alliteration had frayed
splayed, considerably.
Black and yellow crinkled letters hung limply
touched the ground, continued to run.

The receptionist said
that Miro had been born in that house.
Maybe this was something his mother made for him
and he could never bring himself to throw it away.

Image (photograph)
Copyright of this poem remains with the author.
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