Awake in a Strange Landscape

Deep in my gut,
large stones scrape each other
to dust at night, rising into coughs
until my mouth is white chalk in the morning.

         Something has become intolerable.

I work as a waitress.
Every day, rich customers,
their fingers beckoning me like feathers.

        The dishwasher empties trash in the back.

I work with people too young to remember
Vietnam, or even Watergate.
They speak in airy voices of becoming
accountants, going into advertising.
They say it must have been neat
to live in the sixties.

         The black cooks rap to L.L.Cool J in the kitchen.

The fat woman wants to order half of a grilled sandwich.
I tell her we will have to throw the other half away.
She says that’s okay, waving her diamond hands,
her Talbot’s bag at her side.

          I am heaping trash on the dishwasher.
          He is still singing under piles of remains,
          wet cigarettes soaked with coffee,
          everything that is used.
          With strong black arms, he scrapes the blood-
          colored lipstick from wine glasses 
          for three dollars an hour.

The waitresses are talking about how fat they are,
about working out, about spring break, 
about the real job they will get.

         I don’t know how to tell them what I’m thinking.
         I’m thinking of the taste of chalk in the morning,
         I’m thinking that we are Americans,
         lost steer crashing into landscape,
         herds rumbling to some black sea.

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