Fast Food, poem

Fast Food

 

Even a trip to the local burger joint

is a fright show these days. I observe

 

with alarm a flock of silvery shriveled

biddies: granted, every one of them’s

 

probably some kind of genius right down

to her to gnarled toetips, but as we all

 

know, the quality most admired in women

is not wisdom but rather, blank-eyed youth.

 

I myself am sliding down that gentle curving

slope to total invisibility, and worse;

 

in their gentle faces I read the pounded

knowledge of tasks left undone, words not

 

spoken, tricks never learned. One woman’s

eyes, set deep in bluish sockets, slide over

 

my small daughter’s body like guilty, halting

fingers. I know she remembers watching her own daughter

 

sleep night after night, I know exactly how she used to stand

over the child’s bed listening to the sweet

 

melody of inhale, exhale, sigh, feeling

against her wrist the exhilarating rhythm

 

of the flying hummingbird heart of her sleeping child.  Now, she smiles

to herself, clutching her cup of steaming coffee,

 

and nods.  Near her, at a different table,  is a young man, his hair

a glowing honey-blonde, drawn back tight

 

into a long, curling ponytail, and from his earlobe

dangles a dull silver cross.  His narrow hips barely

 

support his work pants, and in profile his perfect, cruel,

unshaven features promise every solemn gawker,

 

male or female, an expensive though unique mistake.

And I realize we are all here for the same thing: to fill up our

 

insides with this cheap, warm sustenance, to travel

homeward bearing an approximation of what we really

 

long for, which is to keep scrambling for the same

small favors tomorrow, the next day, and the next.

 

I find myself crying (for all of us) and stage-cough, pretending allergies,

wiping my eyes under my sunglasses and blowing my nose into my paper napkin.