about the author
Jennifer Moore was born and raised in Seattle, Washington, and is currently a PhD candidate in the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She has work published or forthcoming in Barrow Street, Southampton Review, 14 Hills, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, What the Spigot Said, was published by High5 Press in 2009.
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THE MIRAGE IS A HOTEL FOR SEEING
Jennifer Moore
Alternative content
LAS VEGAS, NV
Outside the city, rattle weed snags the trash. Night and its millions
of pamphlets, every kind of advertisement. It is Saturday
and Vegas is a hot wire strung above a chlorine pool,
a bulb surrounded by nothing. There are women nearby. They glitter
for you, they sing as if undoing their husbands’ belt buckles.
Ambivalence is a mumbling groom, focusing his gaze on the bridesmaids;
none of these women are fathomable. Leave the open bar, the pool
tables, the girls willing to do everything. Leave the salt, the air dividing;
the taxi with its ignition humming, this penthouse shiny and blank
as Nevada and the earth surrounding, willing silence.