Thank You For Trusting Us, Hotel Smit, and Self-Improvement Sonnet

by Salvatore Difalco

Thank You For Trusting Us


This isn’t getting any easier, I said to myself
when I was told once again that I’d won
the consolation prize. Had a heap of them
steaming in my back room, waiting to be
buried in the yard next to my dog Sam
who died last year from cancer. In other
words, my words fail to penetrate. Am
I somehow deficient? Or does my unwieldy
appendage explain it: I can’t help it, I was 
born this way, with this thing I have to
explain to everyone even when it’s tucked
away and under and snug. And if this 
sort of pain doesn’t count, count me out
of the race such as it is, don’t even look
my way. I may turn on you if you stare,
I may do something you and I will
both regret. On the other hand, some
gentle people have expressed their love
for me indirectly, and I thank them 
from the bottom of my being for 
opening a small place in their hearts
where I can enter and light a candle
or clasp my hands together and murmur
a prayer or some other words that 
come soft and with a certain gravitas.
Lump me in a category of one, then,
for I don’t fit with the other freaks,
and drop me on a deserted psychological
atoll where I can worship the sun
and reverently kick sand from my sandals.

Hotel Smit


I’m sleeping, I’m sitting, I’m standing
by the window, beside the wet, peeling
wallpaper, in my underwear—someone
in the building across the alley watches 
me from a dirty window, bare-chested.  

Is he trying also to escape the tedium
of his life? Is he sending me a message?
He makes no gesture; his face looks of
wood, unsmiling and yet not unfriendly.
Should I wave? What would that invite?

Perhaps he thinks of escaping his room.
Is he confined to it by powers external
or of his own conception, like mine?
I have more questions than answers.
When the rain recommences, I sleep.

When I awaken, the rain continues.
I want to visit Van Gogh, I want to
hit a brown cafe, I want to frolic in
Vondelpark, jog by the canals or ride
a clattering bicycle over cobblestones.

Instead, I make the mistake of believing
that so called space cakes are benign.
They are not benign; they’ll open the door
to hell if you lack substance. I waved to 
the guy across the way. He didn’t wave back.

Self-Improvement Sonnet  


Tell me how to be somebody better.
Can’t put one foot in front of the other
without tripping or kicking someone by
accident. Can’t talk without telling lies.

But please give me some tips on how to be
smooth and suave as you are—how fitfully
you laugh and open yourself to banter
unbefitting a man not prone to slander.

Then words go back and forth, and you tell me
that my problemo is essentially 
twofold: one, I need a new hair stylist.
And two, tell everyone I’m a pilot.

If they buy it, you are on your way, dude.
If not, flap your arms and gain altitude.

Salvatore Difalco is a Sicilian Canadian poet and author of five small press books, including Black Rabbit (Anvil Press). He lives in Toronto.