POEM OF THE DAY BY JOSH RIZER

=locker room=
 

i’m training in a restaurant
for some extra holiday dough.
i’m the only male.
all the servers are women.
by the end of one shift
a girl comes out of the bathroom
admitting the onset of
party butt.
another is throwing up
from the previous night’s drinking.
they are tweaking tits,
grabbing ass
and cupping one another’s cookie.
they are rating men as men
enter the establishment.
one says
he has little hands and little feet
and i don’t wanna’ know what else.
they are crop dusting tables.
(the act of walking intestinal gas past eating patrons.)
they are burping like
hung over bullfrogs.
they are tearing off hunks of foccacia
as if the bread were medieval boar
on the bone.
they are drinking water and it’s running down their shirts.
one of them tells another
she’s violating health code.
the other fires back with a knowing eye
so are you when you pick your ass and handle bread.
there’s two in the kitchen,
locked into pelvic doggy-style
replete with ass-slapping
and here’s this solitary man
corn fed and kansas raised,
trying not to get his panties
in a bunch.

-Joshua Rizer