Familia Hotel

a double bed & a flat-screen tv, undressed

stone walls, so much bad blood, banging around

as if it were mid-morning

a fascination with English idioms, the translatable

& the untranslatable, new definitions of familial

relationships

he looks for coded hints, pastiche, self-undermining

ironies, picks up on ‘poverty’ and ‘boredom’

they talk about ‘reforms’ with a machined monotony

& without making eye contact

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they mistook him for his son because of the hoodie,

the toys on wheels, it seems as if he had never grown up

he was sweating profusely, peanuts & little cloths

on which the animals performed

we sat on the cane seats under the awning, in the interval

between ordering & receiving our meals, the exchange rate

had gone up tenfold

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we could see the crowd gathering by the lakeside

a sheet with red hearts hung over the doorway

then everyone wandered off to watch the sunset

first in a line, then in a big circle, & then through progressively more complex patterns 

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Robert Hampson was Professor of Modern Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London, where he also taught on the MA in Poetic Practice. He is currently a Research Fellow at the University of London Institute of English Studies. He co-edited the magazine Alembic (with Peter Barry and Ken Edwards) and has published a number of books of poetry including an explanation of colours (veer, 2010) and reworked disasters (ksf, 2013), which was long-listed for the Forward Prize. A collection of Covid-19 poems is due out from Artery Editions later this year.