Take-Out
Oct 29 2013


The dark stain
on the cardboard bottom
is slowly soaking through,
seems to bloom
like a mutant flower.

The box littered

with hardened crumbs

and greasy crusts, half-chewed.

Clumps of industrial cheese

yellow, congealing,

that taste of rubber and salt.

There are crumpled bags

like the derelict man

camped by the corner store,

you step past

deftly.

And smudged cups

with stagnant puddles

smelling of sticky barroom floor,

before the fight broke out.

How forlorn

is the empty package

the morning after

the night before?

When the food arrived
in its sturdy box
hot and steaming,
we tipped him like guilty liberals
who feel ill-at-ease
being served.
We gave him a look
as if to say we normally cook
with fresh organic ingredients,
sweet-smelling pot
wafting out the door.

How on Sundays at noon
we seek forgiveness
from the sin of convenience
and take-out food.
In the Church of Brunch
we make ourselves.


I was reading The New Yorker's annual "food" issue, and they had the usual 5 short personal essays that typically enliven these theme-based editions. And, also as usual, the contributors run from the famous to the infamous to the unknown. The pieces are typically a delightful mix of confession, humour, and pathos. (I especially enjoyed Akhil Sharma's Butter.)

I'm not sure if this was intention or coincidence, but all of them had in some way or other to do with take-out food. Which, I suppose, is as natural in New York City as light and noise. I never eat fast food or take-out (I don't mean this in a smug or judgemental way; it's just a statement of fact), so this poem is purely an act of imagination, not at all biographical. But there is something unforgettable about the derelict and forlorn detritus of a take-out meal that called for me to try my hand.

I'm thinking in particular of Pizza Hut pizza, which I absolutely detest. How something could be so disgustingly greasy and salty, yet still taste like cardboard, is a mystery to me. Akhil Sharma specifically mentions Pizza Hut. Maybe this is how it came to mind.

I'm still undecided about "...morning after/ the night before". It's a pretty tired cliché, which I suspect any decent poetry editor would zealously excise. But the rhyme works; and the feeling of enervation, vague remorse, and incomplete memory it conveys is pretty hard to duplicate in so many words. After all, clichés become clichés for a reason.