In the Basement of the New Yorker Hotel

by Wayne Lee

Her head is made of plaster. She pokes
it through a tangle of broken mannequin parts

piled on the floor, surveys the wreckage
around her in the basement of the famous hotel—

art deco banquettes coated with dust, ottomans
losing their stuffing to the rats.

Her hair is chipped, one ear cracked, one eyebrow
gone—a definition of beauty no longer in vogue.

If she could rise, she would hover like a moon
over this rubble, dangling by chains overhead.

Reptilian Mind

by Wayne Lee

In my reptilian mind, I still crawl
on my underbelly
through the primordial ooze
inexorably toward evolution.

I am not yet ready to stand, to sire
live young, to bleed, to oppose
forefinger and thumb.

Everything is either food
or not food.

I miss my tail.