PITTSFIELD DINER (poem by Mike Lewis-Beck

 

PITTSFIELD DINER

hides itself off a courtyard off Wabash

Avenue. It’s hard to open the broken brass

Door at the courtyard entrance.

But it’s worth it, sitting at the formica counter.

You want hash browns with?

‘No, I said, they put on the belly.’

Laughter.

Coffee comes (spoon left in cup).

Ice water. Full of ice cubes, forming a meniscus convex.

Bacon and eggs arrived.  Before the toast. Toast not buttered.

Eggs basted but burned red rim. Like a desert sand eating into the oasis.

Toast not cut at an angle, not cut at all. Makes it hard to mount yolks on top to shovel in mouth.

Bacon dry and crunchy. 

“Everything taste OK?”

‘Smile.Yes.’

Spanish in the air. Trabajo.

No one called me hon.

Mike Lewis-Beck writes from Iowa City. He has pieces in American Journal of Poetry, Alexandria Quarterly, Apalachee Review, Aromatica Poetica, Big Windows Review, Birdseed, Black Bough, Black Coffee Review, Blue Collar Review, Bluestem, Cider Press Review, Columba, Cortland Review, Chariton Review, Eastern Iowa Review, Ekphrastic Review, Frogmore Papers, Guesthouse, Heavy Feather Review, I-70 Review, Inquisitive Eater, MockingHeart Review, Pennine Platform, Pilgrimage, Pure Slush, Rootstalk, Seminary Ridge Review, Southword, the tiny journal, Turtle Island Review, Trollopiana and Wapsipinicon Almanac, among other venues. He has two books of poetry, Rural Routes, and Shorter and Sweeter, published by Alexandria Quarterly Press.