I’ve become a connoisseur

of roadside hotels — the mini fridge,

the single-serve coffee machine,

the ironing board. The Super8

in Georgia has a chandelier

above the kitchenette, in Kentucky

there’s a Turkish rug in the lobby

of a Days Inn, hand-knotted red wool

caked in cement dust from work boots,

in Tennessee the centerpiece of geraniums

is delivered daily, sunrise orange pinks

under deep green leaves set on a round

walnut table, but the water pressure is weak

in Alabama, and all three little bottles

are conditioner. And I say: “This will not

define my day,” but it does. My mother

calls and we don’t mention sarcoma

and she says she’s bought me

shampoo and my sister has apologized

and that she feels fine. I fear her health

is failing. What is failing? like a motor

fails, like a bridge fails? I fear my mother

dying. And how did she know I needed

shampoo? Once, in La Paz, at a retreat

for the School of Tourism, a group

of Cañari women laid out a feast

on red woven runners over patchy

grass: cheese, fruits, lima beans, purple

fingerling potatoes, sweet corn. A woman

named Carmelina picked up some grapes

and threw them into the open field

for the birds, she said— so the Pacha Mama[1]

sees how we take care of them

like she takes care of us.    

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[1] Earth Mother in the Cañar Quichua language

*

Pablo Otavalo is from Cuenca, Ecuador, and now lives and writes in Illinois. A recipient of the 2013 and 2014 Illinois Emerging Writers Competition prize, his work has appeared in Poetry Magazine, RHINO Poetry, Jet Fuel Review, Structo Magazine, Levitate, No Tender Fences: An Anthology of Immigrant & First-Generation American Poetry, and other publications. We must find what we revere in each other.