William Doreski
No Vacancy
The lit signs buzz as houseflies
batter against the surly message.
Certain members of the government
are shedding their navy-blue suits
or their shocking red blazers
in rooms the color of vomit.
Highly classified actions ensue.
Meanwhile deficit spending
condenses into a toxic mist
that befogs views of the capitol.
No vacancy for the immigrants
stranded as thunder approaches.
No vacancy in Sudan or Gaza
where the landscapes rumple and toss
through sleepless nights haunted
by voices of arsenic and lead.
No vacancy deep in Siberia
where thawing permafrost ruins
the ecological balance founded
when the last ice age ended.
The government barely functions
but it still generates cruelties
familiar on every playground,
the bullies stale and unwashed.
Gunshots clatter somewhere else,
but the bodies fall locally, already
too decayed to mourn themselves,
too lonely to move into motels
lit by No Vacancy neon
everyone dreads more than death.
The Simple Colors of War
Streaks of fire unzip the sky
over Tehran, Kyiv, Tel Aviv.
Explosives create dark places
inside people who know better
but can’t uncover their mouths
without swallowing human ash.
Now the pear shape of the earth
no longer seems believable.
It must lie flat to accommodate
such emphatic expressions of night.
Much of humanity already lies flat
in Sudan, Palestine, and India.
The simple colors of war
confuse no one, but the energy
released in casual bystanders
depletes the universal angst,
them refuels it with insults.
Eventually these open into wounds
blamed on the friction of shoulder
to shoulder, planet to planet.
Yet the insults, hacked in stone,
will linger in geological
time where everything’s absolute,
even the rough scrawl of nations.
William Doreski lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He has taught at several colleges and universities. His most recent book of poetry is Cloud Mountain (2024). He has published three critical studies, including Robert Lowell’s Shifting Colors. His essays, poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in various journals.
Banner Art:
from Red Sunset, Arkhyp Kuindzhi, 1905-8
Note: In March 2022, the Kuindzhi Art Museum in Mariupol, Ukraine, was destroyed in a Russian airstrike.
