American Life in Poetry: ‘Curtains’ by Stuart Dybek

Stuart Dybek was born in Chicago, where there are at least a couple of hundred hotels a poet might stroll past, looking up at the windows. Here’s a poem from his book, “Streets in Their Own Ink,” from Farrar, Strauss and Giroux.

Curtains

Sometimes they are the only thing beautiful

about a hotel.

Like transients,

come winter they have a way of disappearing,

disguised as dirty light,

limp beside a puttied pane.

Then some April afternoon

a roomer jacks a window open,

a breeze intrudes,

resuscitates memory,

and suddenly they want to fly,

while men,

looking up from the street,

are deceived a moment

into thinking

a girl in an upper story

is waving.

Poem copyright 2004 by Stuart Dybek, from “Streets in Their Own Ink” (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2004), and reprinted by permission of the author and publisher. American Life in Poetry is supported by the Poetry Foundation and the English department at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. We do not accept unsolicited submissions.