As I sat at the table in the cafeteria I was eager to feast on the food staring at me. I was oblivious to anyone around. A hysterical laughter caught my attention and pulled me out of my cocooned world. I looked towards the direction from where the laughter came. There were three men seated deep into a cesspool of friendliness. It wasn’t that that was the highlight of that summer noon. It was the table adjacent to theirs. I was frozen for some minutes. The old lady and the young lad in the middle of a conversation threw me off balance. I could see my grandmother talking to me, telling me pastime stories and teaching me my fast-eroding culture. I could hear her calling out to me to come to her garden to aid her in transplanting her purple flowers. Tears streamed down my eyes.
Do you see the way she looks at me
As she asks what I'd like to eat
I'm not sure of what to say to her
But was that just a wink?
I'm not the only one standing here
That m'lady wines and dines
Yet another school year
In the Cafeteria line
You know she had me with the hair net
Matching the color of her eyes
The sexy way she slops spaghetti
On the plate next to my fries
There's really not a lot
A young school boy can do
As I dream about her from breakfast to lunch
In one continuous drool
She's the Cafeteria lady
Not to keen on her collard greens
But she does serve up a mess of mean
Nachos and young school boy dreams
Patiently waiting in a line
eyeballed an wary
harsh barking of subterranean cultures
standing weary and inured
to the rotten
fug
the rotten
oxygen
inside the high walls and wire, the weighted stone of
the convicted
existing like convicts
Company Cafeteria
People right-handed
carry their cups
in the right hand.
Left-handed people
carry their cups
in the hand that befits
left-handed people.
Whichever the hand
all carry their cups
elbows right-angled.
Whichever the hand,
all cups are at sea, adrift
on an ocean of saucers.
Donal Mahoney
Country Cafeteria
in Shelby County,
Illinois, 1989
The two weeks
I spent in that small town
on assignment, I saw no blacks
except for two older women
regal in every way,
hair coifed in silver gray,
working in the Country Cafeteria.
They walked like pastors’ wives
as they bused their 20 tables.
White badges on their uniforms
announced in red their names,
their years of service.
They never said a word,
not even to each other.
They just took the cups and plates away
and wiped oil tablecloths pristine.
I took three meals a day in silence there,
the only place in town to eat.
I was the stranger in a suit and tie,
a city weed among stout farmers in old coveralls
who came to town each day to note
“no rain yet” and “the corn is dyin’.”
Before each meal instead of saying Grace,
I wanted to stand and ask these ladies
as they bowed before the clutter on their tables:
If you have worked here all these years,
and lived in this town also,
where in the Name of God,
other than at home or church,
are you free to talk or laugh or sing
or clap your hands in emancipation?
Donal Mahoney
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