Pizza Hut, 1990 by Francine Witte

Pizza Hut, 1990

Outside, the rainstutter.
Inside, garlic waft, chatter
of highchair kids. The waitress
staccato, you tapping your fingers.
Say it, I say to rain outside, my
voice bouncing back off the tinted
window glass. The stop of the drops,
the start again. Just fall, I tell it,
just come in one steady stream,
like a river, like Mountain Dew
fizzing out of a soda machine,
like a man who doesn’t love me
anymore.

*

Francine Witte’s poetry and fiction have appeared in Smokelong Quarterly, Wigleaf, Mid-American Review, and Passages North. Her latest books are Dressed All Wrong for This (Blue Light Press,) The Way of the Wind (AdHoc fiction,) and The Theory of Flesh (Kelsay Books). She is flash fiction editor for Flash Boulevard and The South Florida Poetry Journal. She is an associate poetry editor for Pidgeonholes. Her chapbook, The Cake, The Smoke, The Moon (flash fiction) was published by ELJ Editions in September, 2021. She lives in NYC.

Two Poems by Francine Witte

In the teal of morning

Sun lamping up the sky,
we rub our cloud eyes, rub
the fossil night off and start
the dayburn. Turn on the radio,
same old talk of a planet cracked
and ribbed with fires and flood
and hate, tarred up with sludge,
which, really, could have been
glitter if only we had tried.

*

Sunfizzle

And the drip of daywater
slowing, slowing. Nearby,
burnt rubber from a car
speeding on its way to begin
something, to end something.
Shreds of the day in the sky
going violet with twilight.
The sulk of the sun, its
fizzle coming to a dead
stop, the walkaway of time.

*

Francine Witte’s poetry and fiction have appeared in Smokelong Quarterly, Wigleaf, Mid-American Review, Passages North, and many others. Her latest books are Dressed All Wrong for This (Blue Light Press,) The Way of the Wind (AdHoc fiction,) and (The Theory of Flesh.) Her chapbook, The Cake, The Smoke, The Moon (flash fiction) will be published by ELJ September, 2021. She lives in NYC.