Joshua Clover

 

The Map Room

We moved into a house with 6 rooms: the Bedroom, 
the Map Room, the Vegas Room, Cities 
in the Flood Plains, the West, & the Room Which Contains All 
of Mexico.We honeymooned in the Vegas Room where 
lounge acts wasted our precious time.Then there was the junta's 
high command, sick dogs of the Map Room, heel- 
prints everywhere, pushing model armies into the unfurnished 
West.At night: stories of their abandoned homes in the Cities 
in the Flood Plains, how they had loved each other 
mercilessly, in rusting cars, until the drive-in went under. 
From the Bedroom we called the decorator & demanded 
a figurehead... the one true diva to be had 
in All of Mexico: Maria Felix [star of The Devourer, star 
of The Lady General].Nightly in Vegas, "It's Not Unusual" 
or the Sex Pistols medley.Nothing ever comes back 
from the West, it's a one-way door, a one-shot deal,-- 
the one room we never slept in together.My wife 
wants to rename it The Ugly Truth.I love my wife for her 
wonderful, light, creamy, highly reflective skin; 
if there's an illumination from the submerged Cities, 
that's her.She suspects me of certain acts involving Maria Felix, 
the gambling debts mount...but when she sends the junta off to Bed 
we rendezvous in the Map Room & sprawl across the New World 
with our heads to the West. I sing her romantic melodies from the Room 
Which Contains All of Mexico, tunes which keep arriving 
like heaven, in waves of raw data, & though I wrote 
none of the songs myself & can't pronounce them, these are my 
greatest hits