POETRY
By Kelly Gray
Most of the people in the restaurant
have cancer. The waitresses have been hired
to float their soft palms across scalps
as they walk down aisles pouring soup
with too much butter because it is too late
to care about anybody’s heart.
Better to offer dry lips the sweet fat
from beasts milked in agony
with machines unable to grip like a hand
built for digging a grave for my Auntie.
She knew when to pack up her easel.
When to tip the waitstaff her life savings,
her wig having taken up with the bad habits
of pink ribbon bumper stickers meant to placate
the unplacatable. When all the plates
have been set instead of bowls, leaving the soup
to pool beneath the feet of the baldheaded patrons.
That’s when she left, thin at last, she whispered,
and I grieved for the whole fat mass of her.
Photo by J. Lee