Beauty

[ajcohen613]

Her beauty took me
from an hourly motel in Tucson
to the Viennese waterways
of paradise.

Sweat, shame, and distrust
brought me back to an
empty wallet and a
shattered ego.

She didn’t even pretend
to come with me.

I like this a lot. That first stanza is potent, especially the motel reference (conjures up the idea of impermanence from the start). I feel like the middle stanza, in comparison to the rest of the poem, is a little too plain for me. It seems as if the middle serves to explain the crypticness of the poem's purpose and I personally dislike veiled explanations. The end stanza is great; it makes all the movement in the poem, which originally felt like movement meant for two, a misguided journey for one. Sometimes we're so caught up in loving that we neglect to recognize how our partner might not be feeling the same way. Again, I like this a lot.