My coffee
mug prints a brown C
that bleeds into the paper placement
printed with ads for
auto body shops,
realtors, podiatrists
as I sit here at Nick’s.
Every Thanksgiving I fly back here
to visit my old haunts, nostalgia cajoling me
into torturing myself with meals at all
the bad Pennsylvania diners I frequented in my youth,
staggering through the glass door drunk
in the middle of the night to fill up
on greasy food and watery coffee.
in the middle of the night to fill up
on greasy food and watery coffee.
Garlands
of nylon autumn leaves
droop across the windows and etched mirrors.
Elvis sings, piped in from an internet radio station,
not Love Me Tender or Hound Dog or even In the Ghetto
but his more obscure numbers you never hear:
Joshua Fit the Battle. Three Corn Patches. Rubberneckin’.
I used to come here all the time with Abby,
and I’m sad for a moment, welling up with regrets,
until I remember that, if she was here,
until I remember that, if she was here,
she would wrinkle her nose at these songs
and mock me when I
try to defend their greatness,
would groan and cover her ears if I started to croon along.
The Eagles are
losing with agonizing efficiency
on the corner TV, the old men at the counter
hypnotized by the inevitable failure,
eyes affixed to the screen as they fork
wedges of chop or chicken croquettes
into their soft mouths. Like me, they can’t help themselves.
They keep coming back. I slurp my food.
They keep coming back. I slurp my food.
The Italian wedding soup is better than I
remember,
though just as salty; big, ragged meatballs,
plump pasta pearls. I
must be hungry
because even the decrepit salad of iceberg lettuce
draped across the
glass plate
and swimming in gloppy dressing tastes great.
There’s only one entree I can safely order here,
crab cakes made with artificial crab.
Drizzled with lemon they're not too bad.
The waitress, who never recognized me
even when I was a regular,
will bring them by eventually, warning that
the metal dish has been
in the broiler
and is too hot to touch, and as always,
Ill find myself unable to resist
touching it anyways.
touching it anyways.
That was fantastic. I can see the diner, smell the food, hear the music. The longing, the sadness, the bitter nostalgia is all palpable, the last line exquisite. There are places like this from my own youth with, I swear, the same paper placemats with ads, the same waitresses who don't recognize and yet seem to know everyone else in town. The watery coffee, the late night after-tavern burgers and onion rings. I like the way you say "wedges of chop" and not everyone knows what chicken croquettes are. Anyway, loved it.
ReplyDeletePoems about food and feeling... I kinda remember a poem by Gerald Stern in... Lucky Life? An image of "the old restaurants of the soul". His poem has more abstraction and lyricism but yours embodies a lot of prosey sense-specifics (your style)... and both are well-made poems.It has a concision that feels economic despite the fact that it isn't really a short poem. It feels like a world.
ReplyDeleteaffection and admiration
uncle frank
The verification word to add the comment above was ataingut. Attain was missing a needed t but somehow "atain gut" seemed perfect for this poem....
ReplyDeleteIn the last few months the poems seem to have achieved a new useful sense of ...detachment? Broader perspective? A quality of ease? Something that has added both commonness and versatility?
More Wholeness? Something. Whether someone likes your poems or not (aesthetics), no honest man or woman can say that these are not accomplished poems.
Good Luck and Oriented Love
U. Frank