Plastic hotel room
key cards—two of them—left
in her purse. Everything

express, everything
virtual. Where does reality
slide in and out

to open ourselves
to the image of a framed
painting of a woman

who holds a chain—silver
plated—from which her idea
of home dangles? In suspension,

her slender arms wind horizontally
as a marionette
from another era. It is another era

where photorealistic pictures
with paint thick as a thief’s
rubber sole hang in the balance.