Delikatessen
The teddy antelope ratty and tugging
buttons for eyes off, I listen as she takes
english breakfast pollinated by a dry lip.
“I’m including a side of spaetzle
with the sauerbraten and rouladen, today.
Don’t tell oppy.”
My ears glisten like volume,
there’s a trail of dirt leading right to the door,
an indistinct, floury filth, orbit-made.
In it, she stops smiling, and customers enter.
Their mouths will only express for food.
No one smiles; the smile is like the filth.
The half-Deutsch girl interludes:
“Poppy, more spaetzle.”
Her old father beside me in his kitchen
groans a mosaic: “She’s giving it away
for free. We’ll run out. They think
they’ll get more every time now. Bah.
Hungrige, pingelig schwindlers.”
He begins cutting doughy spaetzle
to the boilerpot, while I wash dishes,
groin soaked behind a dripping, dirty apron.
At lunch rush end, all eaters climb across
the ceiling, afraid to touch the floor.
“We almost ran out.” the old Deutsch man
mutters to me, a frown in being.
We pause in the dark as the lights flutter,
and beak of the great squid above us parts
as the tentacles lift us to it.
Page(s) 30
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