Fewer Than 200 Motels

July 26, 2026 Poet:‍ Dan Kaufman ‍Artwork: The Motel by Stanley Smith

Fewer Than 200 Motels

I’d say 1 and 1 is eleven

- Frank Zappa

At the New Excellent Regency Motor Hotel

in Rawalpindi, the roaches were cocky

and the slippery night man delivered hashish

with a complimentary Fanta. One monsoon week

my dam broke when I learned both Rod Serling

and a favorite L.A. cousin, married 30 years

to his German war bride, had died.

On an endless sleepless summer night

at the Robinson Motel in Needles,

long-haul semis pendulum’d on US 99

while the mercury parked at 108. I don’t know

if poet Weldon Keys ever passed this way,

but sweating naked atop the chenille bedspread,

I learned the language of his isolation.

My buddy’s VW was the only car

in the dirt lot of El Elegante Hotel de Motor

in San Blas. After White Fang, his Malamute,

“played” with a neighbor’s chicken,

we weren’t hard to find. Offering the family

our 100 peso apology, they invited us

for pollo y frijoles, y tequila. 

At the Twin Pines Travelodge in Billings

a fishtailing log truck had left only one pine.

The continental breakfast waitress

took me tubing on the Yellowstone.

Later, after showering, I found an infant

asleep on my bed. I checked out

never having read the note.

Once in a Motel 6 outside of Lubbock,

where cinderblock dividing walls

didn’t meet the ceiling, I was serenaded

with a next door squabble, then make-up sex

till 4 a.m.  Over that almost-wall,

over “On the Road Again,” a guy apologized,

and asked me if I’d like a Lone Star.