At Fred’s

Sitting below the tin sunshine of morning, they are
all for themselves
on the vinyl swivels of impending gossip, the backs of shared misfortune.
Cups of milky tea, stringed labels
Lipton-bright
dangled amid crumbs and crumpled sugar packets.
The greenish-hued Princess Pseudomona reigns,
and her ear-bent court of retirees
ne’er-do-wells
braggarts
circumspectly defer,
awaiting the sovereignty of their turn to grouse and gripe,
while the throng of the late backpack-laden
simply grab a buttered roll, one sneaker out the door, one hand clutching a Gatorade,
one eye on a swift escape.

To be a martyr is to be burned at the stake –

This they know without having to be told
or left to wonder where the party is.
It is the grumbling and groveling of the regulars
that is the party, the grist of the mill.
As the fingerprinted glass door swings wildly open,
and slack signs carelessly taped are caught in the cross breeze,
the burden of this party is left behind.

The tin sunshine of morning reigns.