Conversations with the Waitress
by Roy J. Challis
1
Warming up coffees
Serving repartee playfully
Smiling-eyed bantering
until the table of four,
high on testosterone
mistake her civility,
she replies
"One must applaud enthusiastically
those members of the insect world
who devour the males after mating."
The dull-eyed grizzled one growls,
"In the human world too,
more slowly, of course,
from the inside."
2
the librarian
marvels at the books
she takes
no masturbation novels here
nor self-help.
No chicken soup,
but Plato, Socrates and Kant
Whitman, Ginsberg, and Becket.
Later, at Mike’s Place
she says,
"Just coffee, dear, I didn’t know
you worked here. Working your way through college?"
"No, I’m working my way through life."
"But those books you read,
I would have thought . . ."
"I’m a poet.
I observe people here
and then imagine who and what they are?"
"I too observe. I must detect.
Do you realize how many perverts
frequent libraries?
The titles they ask for.
It’s phenomenally disgusting.
At night we vacate our sanctuary
scared that some monster
crazed by a book he has read
will attack us."
"Wishful thinking, perhaps
3
In the kitchen
Amid the cacophony of pulsating white goods
She slides darkly into moist conversations with herself.
Lean lovers caress her neck with ethereal tongues
Groping hands pluck strings play chords get down
A crescendo the dance is over the lady sings
Sweet liquid hymns escape from teeth teased lips
Swollen smiling red.
ROY
CHALLIS OF NORTH BATTLEFORD, SASKATCHEWAN, IS A SUPERANNUATED TEACHER
OF LITERARY AND THEATRE ARTS, AS WELL AS A PART-TIME WRITER/PERFORMANCE
ARTIST.
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