Robert McDonald
Summer 2025 | Poetry
A Vacancy
Vacancy, you’ve remained
on the buzzing
neon sign
at the Driftwood Inn
on Red Arrow Highway for so long now
that folks
might start to wonder
if you secretly
own
the place:
the sandlot out front
where stray cats like to scratch,
and snapped bones
of beech trees near that ditch
by the road.
The shutters
on the windows?
They’re fake, and look,
one’s fallen off. Blue
paint
on the doors tears away
like strips of paper;
the only rented rooms
are the yellowjacket nests.
Robert McDonald is a queer poet who lives in Chicago, where he worked for many year at independent bookstores. His work has appeared recently in Allium, Emerge, Unbroken, Jabberwock Review, Anacapa Review, and West Trade Review, among others.