Spotlight: Chemo-Brain / Motel 6
Chemo-Brain
Your eyes go suddenly vacant,
mouth slack,
expression anxious.
You search,
search for a word,
a train of thought,
a reason you have opened
the refrigerator door.
You rub your face,
run your hand through your hair,
lean against a cabinet,
resort to a favorite ploy—
going through the alphabet.
Your head is a pinball machine,
thoughts trickling through synapses.
Each lights up with recognition,
but the ball bounces on
erratically until it finds
the small blinking hole
where it fits.
Oh, of course, you mumble,
a wave of relief passing
across your face.
I wanted the milk.
Motel 6
Behind every window a life
dispersed
out of gear
broken into here and there
a nebulous somewhere lurking
in the unformed future.
For now, walls rented,
space possessed with time
ticking down.
Underfoot the cracked tile
revealing daily tread.
On beds the dangling threads
of worn bedspreads.
Pictures that escape into garish
gardens, landscapes
cactus bleak to forest lush.
A place to be
when nothing else suffices,
with no need to delight,
surprise, no reason
to be remembered.
Sharon Scholl is a retired professor of humanities and world cultures who convenes A Gathering of Poets critique group and is an associate of the Atlantic Center for the Arts. She has written two chapbooks, Summer’s Child and Eat Space. Her poems have appeared in Sin Frontera and Gyroscope Review.
