Life screams at you like the vacuum
sucking up beer caps.
Where are you going?
Back to stacking place mats,
paper napkins, and the half-and-half,
which looks a whole lot bigger
through the fisheye of the water glass
that has become the vivarium of your life:
It whispers now.
Should you tell them
it costs $10.99 to stare out
opposite windows and fight over the tip?
You bring ketchup
even though he has soup
and your eyes are as bored
as your brain, as your body, energy
used up on the customers
who think a few crinkled ones
mean something more than the mind-
numbing—something. Maybe if you
keep moving the boss won’t
notice you forgot your name tag,
those slanted stickers, faded, cracked,
make it harder to pretend you’ll ever
have enough air to do more than breathe.
Vanessa Ogle is a poet, writer, and educator. Her poetry has appeared in Cordite Poetry Review, Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine, The 2River View, and elsewhere. She received her BA from Stony Brook University and her MFA from Hunter College. In addition to her writing career, she has worked in a variety of restaurants and fast food establishments and has written about class issues and her experience in those industries for The Nation and elsewhere.
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