Here’s a poem I started at the Iowa Writing Project Summer Institute and have been working on. I was trying to capture an early morning moment in a cafe. I began to overhear conversations and wonder about the lives of the men I saw there.

Dottie’s Cafe

What is it about old men and grease,
men who rise early for
eggs and pancakes and bacon
frying on an ancient flattop
blackened by years of fat burned
into the finish?

Old men who
through habit woke early
for work at the slaughterhouse,
launched into the kill line by 7AM,
the smell of bleach and offal and shit
with the last swig of morning coffee;

Old men who trudged to milk cows
every day of the friggin’ year —
at 5AM, a light on in the barn
the smell of manure and feed
and cow — even when cold hands
hung useless as rocks;

Old men whose wives
are now long gone,
dead and buried (Nine years already?),
or simply melted away,
traded for the bar
and a daily six-pack;

These men arrive at Dottie’s Café,
and at 6:13 AM,
though the ancient air conditioner
wheezes valiantly above the door,
these men seek simple warmth
and a belly fully of grease.