Left-Over Greek Food In A Styrofoam Box by Mark Weber

leftover

LEFT-OVER GREEK FOOD IN A STYROFOAM BOX

2:39 a.m.
Janet has just gotten up
and turned the thermostat down
so to be sure i awake shivering
each morning
dinner at Olympia Greek restaurant
with the Moores tonight, last night,
eating my grape leaves and hunks of goat
window table behind us screams
when fist-size rock
comes crashing through the glass
splattering their plates
hurled from passing car on Central
hidden in the downpour
Todd surmises it’s a protection ring
trying to muscle in
i think it cheap shot vengeance
i also make a note not to ever again
in the future sit at window tables
like when in the post office canteen
I’d sit with my back always to the wall
we leave there and walk in the rain
to hear Gary Snyder read
and in the crowded bookstore
when some dope situates himself
right in my line of sight
i get tough and drive on him, “You’re
not gonna stand there in my face
are you,” chewing gum giving him
the San Quentin glare
he moves away when Todd adds gangster chuckle
same dumb kid we heard a couple weeks ago
at an open mic
read his long poem about a collection agency
that had the nerve to ask for It’s money
as if his rights were violated
ran to mommy & daddy to bail him out
he’s lucky it was only a telephone call
and not Sicilians in expensive suits
oddly the whole crowd of college brats
applauded thunderously, probably because
he read with such self-righteous histrionic fervor
well, now he can write a poem
about the mean guy
that threatened him at a poetry reading
his scrawny indignant little goatee held high
and i pull the bedding up over my shoulder
adjust the night lamp
continue reading Thucydides THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
“…the whole human race, like Greeks,
murderous Greeks everywhere….”

Poem taken from SILENT SKIES, Volume One Number One, edited by Tammy Anderson and built by Kurt Nimmo, 1994

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