Alaska

At daybreak north of Seward, the speaker sees four suns outside a whore house, then describes thick velvet, a curved bar and tall black women.

The speaker has argued that place does not matter to glamour, but calls this remote setting over the top. The final interior details give that admission a specific scene.

'Alaska' places the speaker at 'daybreak' near 'one of the two tips of the world', seeing 'four suns' while 'standing outside of a whore house, / about fifty mile direct North of Seward'. The speaker admits to having 'receinty' sided with those who say 'it dosen't matter where / you are to appreciate glammor', concedes 'this is over the top', and then lists the interior: 'the velvet was thick', 'The bar short and curved', 'The women were tall and black'.

The poem swings from a near-mythic sky to a plain inventory of a room, and the speaker's small reversal about glamour carries its tone, half amused and half impressed. Flat, unpunctuated declarative lines keep the vision and the bar on the same level. The source spellings are kept as typed, and the distance word is a typed overstrike of mile and mils rather than miles.