Tag: Poetry About Restaurants

Joe Mills: “Skeletons in the Waffle House”

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Skeletons in the Waffle House

 If you get there and the Waffle House is closed? That's really bad...
                — Craig Fugate, Former Head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency 

When the trick or treating is over,
we end up here, as we usually do 
after a work shift, a dance, a date.  

It’s comforting to know exactly 
what we’re going to get, no matter 
who we are at the moment, a skeleton, 
ghost, jilted lover, single parent.  

The staff doesn’t care. They’ve seen it all 
year after year. The faces and bodies 
and costumes change; the coffee doesn’t. 

So, when we go towards the light, perhaps
we shouldn’t be surprised if we discover
it’s a Waffle House sign, the first place
to open after an emergency or disaster.

About the Author: A faculty member at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Joseph Mills has published several collections of poetry, most recently “Bodies in Motion: Poems About Dance.”

Image Credit: Dvortygirl “Closeup of a homemade waffle” Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0

Robert S. King “Head Waiter”

Posted on by asitoughttobemagazine 
Head Waiter

A waiter hurries up, then waits.
The customer is always right.
Carnivores love more-than-you-can-eat deals.
Their table manners grunt greedy sounds.
They might even eat me who has no taste.

The only tip they leave trickles down
from their lips. Maybe I’d like
my own pound of flesh, even sitting down
with cannibal capitalists to the richest
food for thought.

But I’ll have to wait on that.

About the Author: Robert S. King lives in Athens, GA, where he serves on the board of FutureCycle Press. His poems have appeared in hundreds of magazines, including Atlanta Review, California Quarterly, Chariton Review, Hollins Critic, Kenyon Review, Main Street Rag, Midwest Quarterly, Negative Capability, Southern Poetry Review, and Spoon River Poetry Review. He has published eight poetry collections, most recently Developing a Photograph of God (Glass Lyre Press, 2014) and Messages from Multiverses (Duck Lake Books, 2020) His personal website is www.robertsking.info.

Image Credit: James Ensor “Gentleman and Waiter” Public domain image courtesy of Artvee