MAN IN DINER, WAITRESS AT NIGHT

I always have the best view.

I watch her deliver five plates at once, her body moving

like water between tables, customers.

Her arms bending like a blade of grass in wind, but to the drunken teens

In booth 12, she’s just a waitress.

She carries chocolate pie, the frozen kind, cheeseburgers topped with limp bacon,

crinkle-cut fries, maybe a sausage-egg biscuit if it’s morning.

The yellow in the egg runny, matching her greasy hair and apron.



I see the twenty-something years of work on her face, her eyes sag

but only a little, long pony tail swaying with her walk,

her tired hands.



The teens see a pair of arms, and only that.

They laugh when Tommy aims a paper spit-ball in her direction.

She doesn’t defend herself, but

neither do I, though I should.



I want to take her in my arms and say,

You are Aphrodite.           

Curves beneath your uniform, fire beneath that skirt.



The streetlamp haloes her, walking to a run down car,

Her reflection stretching, smearing across the window I see her through.

Between us cold, glass, silence.


About Andrea Fekete:
Andrea Fekete was born and raised in southern West Virginia. Her poetry has appeared in such magazines as "ABZ," "The Barbaric Yawp", "The Virginia Adversaria" among many others. She has one published poetry collection entitled _I Held a Morning_ and one published novel _Waters Run Wild_. She earns her MFA in Creative Writing in December 2013 and has an MA from Marshall University. She often teaches English and resides in WV.