Michael Klein



Rooms We Didn't Live In



When drinking luck brought me mystery and money
I holed up in the Capri Motor Lodge on Hempstead Turnpike
because I could deal with the small world of a vodka
stupor floating me under the reflection in a mirrored ceiling
of crisp hundred dollar bills circled like green fire
around the bed. I won it on a horse.

I think of that day when it feels like
I'm not getting . . . whatever. Enough.

What is god's will after he lets you live?

Who was that money for?


Copyright 1993, Michael Klein. Reprinted from 1990 with the author's permission.


Michael Klein's poetry has appeared in Kenyon Review, New England Review,
Crazyhorse, Ploughshares
, and the James White Review. He teaches writing at Sarah
Lawrence College and for the MFA program at Goddard College. He edited and
introduced Poets for Life: 76 Poets respond to AIDS (Persea Books, 1992), which
won a Lambda Literary Award. His first book of poetry, 1990, was published by
Provincetown Arts Press in 1993. "Rooms We Didn't Live In" is reprinted by
permission of the author.