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near the chestertown mall

by Gabriel Ricard

There’s this so-called restaurant
where all the women dress like nuns,
are just about to turn thirty
and laugh at every dirty joke he tells.

Terrible food,
but really,
it’s the service that counts.

The waitresses are not whores.
No one takes their clothes off.

When he gets off work at six
he hits his favorite table
in the middle of the restaurant
and gravitates towards the back
by the time he decides to leave.

Closing time is about as frequent
as an acoustic set by Christ
or one of his lesser-known disciples.
No one wants to know whether or not
they should be serving whiskey
at four in the morning on a Sunday.

His record for staying were those first two days
after his wife disappeared after years
of swearing to go through with it. Her car was delivered
to a parking lot in Dublin, but she’s never been near
that part of the world before or since.

He just couldn’t deal with it,
so he took up a temporary residence
and asked at least three of those waitresses to marry him.

They were sweet
and somehow made him feel like
he was too good for them.

He hasn’t put in that kind of time since,
but he still likes to hang around
until there’s nothing on the streets but taxicabs
and halfway house journalists who commit
their stories to songs of mostly made-up words.

It’s become an everyday thing
to avoid his coworkers and scowl
the parties going on in the apartment above his.

Nothing to do but go to work
and pretend that it’s almost impossible
to sit still and wait for six o’clock.

He pays his bills,
has groceries delivered
and watches a lot of those classic TV channels
when he can’t sleep.

This is a town of strip clubs,
reasonable whore houses
and bars that start in the sewers
and won’t rest until you get to a place
where you can hold up your glass
and stand a good chance of catching a shot of lightning.

None of that appeals to him.

He likes his weird little restaurant.
Enough time will hopefully go by
that he’ll eventually just lean against the wall
at one in those tables in the back, go to sleep
and not wake up in the same place or as the same age.

In the meantime
the drinks are cheap,
and their specials have yet to let him down.

01/02/2010

Posted on 01/02/2010
Copyright © 2024 Gabriel Ricard

Member Comments on this Poem
Posted by H.M Stevens on 01/04/10 at 07:27 AM

Nice juxtaposition"Terrible food... but the specials havent let him down." Sometimes people so isolated have a few public outlets, that feel like home but allow them to show their face. I enjoyed the poem Gabriel.

Posted by Bruce W Niedt on 01/05/10 at 08:10 PM

I wanna hang out with you in this diner! As always, vivid, detailed and darkly amusing.... d:-)

Posted by Sarah Wolf on 01/06/10 at 04:00 PM

I love how you always make the most ordinary places so exciting. I need my mind to work that way more often... Also... You need to write another story about what happened to the wife... I need to know...

Posted by Anita Mac on 01/06/10 at 06:04 PM

Another excellent piece. I love how everything is a character when you write; the people, the places, the things... Love it.

Posted by Philip F De Pinto on 01/07/12 at 01:05 PM

your poetry is fluid, like lava flow or a fountain in Rome. so Dolce Vita like. and dreamy and sequential which cannot help but attract the Paparazzi to snap its picture and sell it to a rapt public which can never get enough. yours, are definitely odes worth the telling and retelling. attention grabbers is what they are.

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