Working the Overnight
The Midwest is nothing like the coasts.
Opiated lakes scatter
amid thirsty prairies pining for a kiss.
It’s a flat landscape.
I knew Kat was not flat when she entered
the 24 hour sub shop where I worked the overnight
decked out in studded jean jacket and silver chain-strap boots.
Read the love poems she wrote
scrawled over the bathroom walls
in dripping swirls of medieval script.
Until then the night shift
brought only boisterous boys
at 4 in the morning
who drank too much and ordered sub sandwiches with extra onions
and yellow squares of American cheese.
But she ordered nothing so when dawn
came I took her home we woke
and went for breakfast Kat ordered spaghetti and meatballs,
devoured as if she hadn’t eaten for days.
I didn’t ask.
Her boots clanked as she walked away
down the flat sidewalk of a bank-owned town.
A stray cat in silver and blue.
*
Lisa Seidenberg is a filmmaker and writer who brings a cinematic sensibility to her written work. Her poems and literary criticism are published in NewVerseNews, Atticus Review, ONE ART: A Journal of Poetry and VENU Magazine. Her documentaries and poetry films have been screened widely in Europe, and in the U.S., inc. the Sundance Film Festival and Berlin and London Film Festivals. Her photo essay book, “Dark Pools” was featured at the NY Art Book Festival and Rendez-Vous Image (RDVI) in Strasbourg.
