Heartbreak Hotel
 
My dad always thought
I looked like Lisa Marie Presley.
He was obsessed with Elvis, an Italian immigrant,  who could never quite pronounce “Presley” without it sounding like “Pretzel.”
 
I was five years old when Elvis died.
my parents mourned and mourned,
I thought he was my uncle.
I screamed whenever my father put on an Elvis record.
 
 I thought if I listened to Elvis I would die, too,
or my parents would die, or my brother,
picked off like guitar strings
if they were in earshot of Heartbreak Hotel.
 
When I became a teenager,
I fell in love with a dead man, James Dean.  
I went on a Manhattan walking tour  
when I was sixteen.
 
The guide took us to all of James Dean’s haunts:
night clubs, restaurants, and his abandoned apartment,
where I ripped off a piece of wallpaper
and put it in my pocket.
 
A woman on the tour said,
“My friend and I think
 you look like Lisa Marie Presley.”
She had a tattoo of Elvis on her arm.
 
That night in Penn Station,
 waiting for a train to take me home,
a drunk man fell on the third rail,
it shook him like a possession.
 
Heartbreak Hotel was playing
on the 6 o’clock news this morning.
Lisa Marie Presley died,
and now you’re ready to go.
 
Your backpack strapped to your back,
I watch you walk onto the platform,
blowing kisses
at my childhood triggers.
 
 ​Published in Bluebird Word
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 

Artist: "Jenni" Guinevere von Sneeden, @guinevere.von.sneeden