Adam Scheffler
Budget Hotel Room, 2AM
And yet, the ancient sputtering faucets
clear their throats as if trying to say
something kind, the tiny insignificant
wrapped bars of soap smell sweet.
Even the Gideon bible in the roller drawer
might mean love, like a set
of convoluted bizarre instructions
written in the wrong language,
but for the right emergency.
Adam Scheffler reads “Budget Hotel Room, 2AM”
Adam Scheffler grew up in California, received his MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and his PhD in English from Harvard. His poetry books are A Dog’s Life (winner of the 2016 Jacar Press book prize), and Heartworm (winner of the 2021 Moon City Press book prize). His poems have appeared in Narrative, The Yale Review, The Common, The American Poetry Review, Verse Daily, Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, and many other venues. He teaches in the Harvard College Writing Program.