Feature > Poetry
Adrian Matejka
Adrian Matejka is the author of four collections, including The Big Smoke, which won the 2014 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. His new collection, Map to the Stars, was published in 2017. Matejka is the recipient of fellowships from the Bellagio Center, Guggenheim Foundation, Lannan Foundation, and United States Artists. He is Poet Laurate of Indiana.Everything Is Exactly The Same
at the hospital & in the Tuesday veneer
of waiting, even minor coffee spills shake up
the mostly vacant halls while the same custodian
searches the white brick for the difference
between too late & senility, between lights out
& the lights being out on a summer-sized screen.
This isn't a place for anyone to be: machines
beep the modal music of our broken systems—
the same octave in every room. Even in the lobby
with the welcome desk festooned with get-well
cards & balloons. Even in the crumb-collecting
waiting area full of addiction & hope. & above,
halogen lights keep quivering the same benedictions,
ill-timed & in double time for no one in particular.
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