Magna cum Murder and Midwest Writers Workshop used to be held in the Hotel Roberts in Muncie, Indiana. The Hotel Roberts is no longer in operation. Now MWW is held elsewhere in Muncie and Magna has moved to Indianapolis.

I’ve resigned myself to never seeing this view again, so I’m extra extra extra glad I took this photograph.

Muncie, Indiana, View From the Hotel Roberts

Also that I wrote this poem.

Muncie, Indiana, on a Fourth-Floor Hotel Room Window That Opens

by
Marian Allen

Open–everything jumps
a dimension. I can smell
the particular perfume
of the town, hear the clock-chime,
alley-rattle, hiss of this town’s tires
on this town’s asphalt.

A view through glass
might just as well be television.

I can lean out an open window,
see the painted detail
of that rosy cornice, the edge
of that sun-browned balcony,
the trumpet-flowers’ two-tone greenery
and orange flare below.

Pigeons become my fellow citizens.
We share a language, denizens of the air.

~*~

The venue for Magna is beautiful and downtown Indy is a trip, but I do miss that view. Ah, well. That’s why memory and nostalgia are blessings, eh?

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: A character is nostalgic for a hotel or motel.

MA