Don Winter
Late Shift Waitress
Nights at this place
I yell orders to a short order
cook five feet away, to his beefy
tattoo blurred by the years to maybe
some woman’s name, or maybe the name of a ship
which went down. I learn to appreciate
the customers who answer What are you having?
with Another one of those nights.
I mechanically recite the list of everything I’m out of
and feel it’s not much
compared with the litany of going and gone
I sing softly back
to the radio. The local color here
is blue: blue plate special, an entire row
of songs on the jukebox, my blue-streak
chatter on the phone,
fingering the dark blue bruise on my neck.
No matter how many times I rehearse,
I’ll never be able to say
No more. Don’t wait up. Won’t be back, ever.
Words like the thunk
of a car meeting something alive in the road.
At break, I look down at the plate of bacon and eggs
made up like a face,
growing colder by the minute.
Guess I’m not very hungry after all.
Whatever hunger brought me here
in the first place, whatever I wanted
so badly I could taste it,
somehow became the cockeyed wisdom
in those Have-a-hank handkerchiefs
behind the counter, in the measured
doses of bromo hanging over the cartoon
outline of a woman with all the fizz
knocked out of her. All here for the sadness
and the burning
and the neon promise spelled out: WE NEVER CLOSE.
Page(s) 25
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- Staple
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