5 Poems by Kristin Sanders

A Review of My Airbnbs in Provence

I wouldn’t exactly say the floors were “clean.” The soles of my feet black within hours. I wouldn’t exactly say there was “light.” One window facing the grey stucco façade next door. I wouldn’t exactly say it matches the photos. I wouldn’t not stay here again! The tub was fine. I saw no bugs. But dark and sad inside its walls, your home did not seduce me. A sailor did, and drove me to the next place, palatial and bright, graced with two windows, one looking onto wet sheets strung on sunlit buildings, the other looking out almost onto the sea. I stayed two months. The sailor taught me to make a French salad and took me on his sailboat, then stopped. I’d also meet another man, with whom I’d stay in the future, who’d visit me in the States. He smelled strongly of Chanel Blue and was rough in bed, both a plus. But his teeth yellow. I’m waiting for someone to bring Crest Whitestrips to the Continent. I’m waiting for someone to be very honest now: tell me my flaws, then fix them.

On Hotel Rooms

What if, in the end, we go to hotels not to escape but expand? Before the rooms I rented, on my own or not alone, rooms in people’s homes offered, invited into, hotels and inns, huts in Bali, who was I? Stuck blank, floating in a pool of same. The rooms themselves, the more opulent of them, red curtains, velvet tapestries, made me come. The dark strange phosphorescence, a womb so ready to please. Fast wifi, strong flush of a toilet, plush towels, curated records—tell me who else has tried this hard to win your affection? Roll around, make a mess, fuck the sheets onto the floor. It’s fine. You belong here, the fantasy of your one-night world. The fantasy of you, who you could not become till now. This life was meant to be yours, no accountability, nothing to clean up afterwards. Just leave. Forget to tip, forget who’s next in, coming to replace you. Shine. This is your stage, love. Go on and post the photo of the empty room service tray. We are all watching, we are all rooting you on in the artificial intensity of your one wild and exaggerated life.

Men Without Rooms

The men who did not have rooms, who would not invite me inside, because of kids or other inconveniences, invented rooms instead, rented in hotels and homes, promised Mexican villas and bathtubs but landed on a small, two-room apartment with separate beds. The man with roommates, for instance, how he said he’d have me over but never did, how he left the scent of his scalp and cigarettes on my sheets, how I played Circe, trapping him in my studio up the hill, a room he loved, I know, but couldn’t stay inside of. Four weekends in a row, then I released him. (I mean he left.) The men without rooms I was allowed to enter came to mine instead. Brought music, brought red wine, stale promises. These men, they know the value of a room. Know they need to book early to get what they want from me. Know they can’t rely solely on my offer. An illusion, after all. There is only so much you can pretend before desire slides out of reach, so far no candlelight or crotchless thong can call it back. In truth, all of the men are men without rooms. Looking for a place in the Other, finding it both there and not. You can hear me, right? I’m going to light us a fire now in the chimney of my charred heart. I’m going to ask you to watch while I make this next move, thinking not of you, no, but of rooms I’ve never met, men with demands and dreams architecturally real, exposed beams and blisters, and my body a door, open.

A Poem for Teenage Girls

Should you travel, should you travel alone? Yes. Go. Should you travel on a man’s dime, why not, but only when you’re older. At first, you split the cost. At fifty, they pay, they’ve accrued the wealth to afford you. I’m talking again from the inside of my own pain, the way I do when I’ve entered too many rooms, too many men entering mine. When I am drinking whiskey at the end of February at the end of the dark. I am speaking from a wealth of experience, I am writing to you from Paris, I am reaching you from the freedom of over forty, alone. Look, everything costs a price. I used to be given whole flats of strawberries free at the farmer’s market. So you take what you can get. Use what you’ve been given. Still, you pay. I have no master and no love. A lot of little likes. It’s not so bad. Pas mal. I think I would make many different mistakes, and all the same ones again. Chains, a child this time. How delicious it must feel, to face freedom post-divorce. Not that I know. We are all afraid to choose wrong, and we will. Still, you pay. No matter which doors, which bodies in the room, which you—you pay with regret, elation, with how you wish you’d understood your value, how anything is captivity if you can’t make a better choice.

A Review of Our Apartment in Bacalar

It hurts to explain what happened to you, how you invested forty thousand into a business plan in Bacalar, how your business partner of eight years failed to show up at the Cancun airport, how you called him and he cried, how he died, how his father sent a photo of him in the casket but even that looked staged, how you took the papers for the land you owned to the town hall, how the papers were fake, how his cousins said if you go to the authorities we will blame you for his death, how you never knew if he really died, how it was the longest con, eight years, how you thought you were going to build a small hotel on this lagoon-front land, how I listened on the phone to each development, how you were sick with stress, how I flew in, still, how you picked me up at the airport, how it was only our third time meeting, how you had found an apartment for us, how it had two bedrooms and two baths, how I slept alone each night, how you were coughing, how you were sick with yourself, how we had sex and then you left the room, how we did not cuddle, how you said it was not going to work out, how we swam in the turquoise lagoon, how I glowed in the sun, how I wanted you, still, how the February heat was a wet calm, how you touched me on the wooden

dock where that family might have seen, how you entered me in the shallow shoulder-high water, how I showered alone after each day’s swim, how I ate chilaquiles and mole for breakfast alone, how I worked at my laptop, how you watched movies daily on your phone, how you were probably embarrassed, how you were not yourself, how I did not know you in the first place, how I was so naïve, how we changed our flights after two weeks, how I cried in that airport bar, how I thought any of this would lead to love.

Kristin Sanders is the author of CUNTRY, a finalist for the National Poetry Series, and two poetry chapbooks. Her work has recently been included in Prose Poetry: An Introduction (Princeton UP) and published in Columbia Journal, Longreads, Lit Hub, and Los Angeles Review of Books. Read more at kristindianesanders.com