BRETT WARREN

House of Pizza

Forget the tables—the only cool place to sit
was at the counter, on a chrome and vinyl stool
that spun with some complaint. These days,

could you even turn your back on a glass door,
forget that nowhere is safe anymore?
Could you ignore the darkening outside,

pretend it’s only weather or the season
or day into night? And you haven’t eaten cow
in decades—how is it you grieve

a soggy grinder roll, three meatballs
full of hidden gristle and fennel seeds, slabs
of white cheese melting like diamonds

on a jester’s robe, and all of it laid out
like the corpse it was on thin tinfoil
and a flimsy paper plate?

Yet given half a chance, you’d go. Not to eat,
but to absorb the world the way it was, drink in
the dreary beauty you didn’t know how to drink

back then. You’d slog across the railroad tracks,
along the grimy sidewalk, past windows steamed
by oven heat. Push open the jangly door

and in you’d go, even knowing how it all
unfolds, even knowing you no longer love
any of what you hungered for.