Table number eight
at the Silver Skillet
is taking too long
and Annette,
who calls
everyone baby,
doesn’t want
to be rude but
she needs them to hurry
the hell up. Her teal
scrunchie matches her teal
shirt matches
her teal eye-
shadow, her long
nails click on
the counter
in time with Teresa snapping
her gum at the register.
The waitresses all live
in the ice
box, come out
for their shifts
with freezer burn,
as permanent
as the checkered tile, which,
admittedly, peels up
in the corners but damn it
if you don’t
have to pull
real hard.
There are the
two young
ones with the purple hair and
Oscar the cook and they all
want their smoke break
but Linda
is waiting on
toast. The boys
in the kitchen
are serving up
lemon pie between James Brown
songs until Annette interrupts
by knocking the old radio
to the floor
with her big ass
and the bus-
boys all
groan.
“Service with a smile… most
of the time” says the sign above
the pass-through. As she swings
past the shelf
with the framed
photo from
that one time
Dave Chappelle
stopped by, she blows him
a kiss because damn it
if he didn’t flirt with her
a little,
she twirled
her teal
scrunchied
ponytail
and tapped her nails,
stood unwittingly under
the “If you are what you eat,
I’m fast, easy,
and cheap”
sign for a good
five minutes
before Linda
nudged her sideways and when
she told her kids they didn’t
believe her and she drums
the counter in front of me
as she passes through,
“Just another minute, baby.”
