Walking into the Wynn, Las Vegas, and You Are Stitched Into

Walking into The Wynn, Las Vegas, and You Are Stitched Into

Poem by Rose Hunter
Art by Dorothee Lang

a dishtowel in a fruit-festooned
kitchen when you’ve stumbled
out of bed, hungover
while someone showered shaved
dressed booms
Good morning sunshine!
crunch of his breakfast cereal
flinging the curtains

open; the glass the
butterflies the baubled
trees the toy trains

dendrite tiles
and Jamaica calyces
under your feet

all that ruby
whispering to the lime:
clearly, for this job,
you need
to be something
other than you are

something more or less, human

at least, the Dior woman and
the bronze shoe
turn their golden shoulders

as the workers on the Encore
inch up the great scallop shape,
a see-sawing handkerchief
past the brown windows

with chalk and SC, OX; HI!
giant fingerprints, missing panes;

orange vest daubs and hardhats and
the floating steps below
with toy shovels and
wheelbarrows and bulldozers

backs to the cathedral
where Penance, Prayer and Peace

surround their own blue sky
faces turned, to their God

as the MGM Grand
its colour alone
a ping-pong ball

at your head
doesn’t hurt, but

the MGM Grand

lions flapping sad tails
against the glass
fish tank

the MGM Grand

a jukebox with
all the songs playing
at once; an exit

if you can find it
won’t begin to answer
your question: where

did you come from and
where are you going (two
questions I mean);

to the Stratosphere;
beyond the pool wall
the desert spills out
Chipotle, Tabasco, Búfalo,
Valentino, with drops

of salsa verde. Between

the bench press and upright
row, a man says. Rock island
( ), and the water-
fall; to the Golden Nugget;

if I were a shark
I too would regard
with a disdainful
overbite, the species who
put me in a tank
circled by a pool
and who waterslide
through the middle

shrieking

but I am a shark; a
gummy, my tank the lobbies and
hallways; the borders and
brocades and chandelier
details: coral, and the elevator
buttons – I am a gummy-
mouthed nudger of
elevator buttons:
You

are all very different & over
and over the same but
very different but the same but.


-refers from the word sharks in Scot Siegel’s poem in the absence of stars tonight, gulls