Valla's Roadside Diner

My father in one of his energetic
moods said, “We’re gonna buy
that run down café at Bill’s corner,
gut the thing and name it after grandma.”
Grandma went along with it
because she’d worked at the Waldorf Astoria,
driven rivets in Waco during WWII
when there weren’t any men left.

I turned nine on opening day,
wondered how many people would come,
run through the door, smell hamburgers
unwrap straws, enjoy new plates and
white coffee cups, but the gut inside
my mind worried, the one inside like when I was baptized
and didn’t remember exactly all
the reasons why I was under water.

The booths were sure enough red
like blood, we would be saved from poverty
even though there were vegetables
in the garden, only problem
was the worms eating holes in the leaves;
caterpillars I half-heartedly slung in the wind.

Finally at sunset a truck driver spilled
his coins on the counter only he didn’t count
because grandma knew him, and his quarters’
plunk was too small, like if they were fish you’d throw them back
into the empty highway.




















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