Holly Pelesky
Restaurant People
We smell like meat and sweat when we
clock out: ties loosened, shirts
unbuttoned, tits out, hair down.
We take shots at the bar across
the street, tipping generously with damp bills pulled
from our aprons. We flirt with their bartender
if for no reason than he also
smells like meat and sweat.
We outdo each other with bad tipper stories, calculating
percentages in our heads like tutors. We don’t say
we’ve given up on the good in humanity because our livelihoods
depend on it and tomorrow is another gamble.
Tomorrow changes its clothes into today and
we chain smoke next to the dumpster, get
stoned in cars while our patrons suck down their
Diet Cokes and muse, where’s our server?
We drop trays of food, run wrong credit cards,
shatter hot glasses in the ice bin, looking around
with glassy eyes to see if anyone noticed.
We are going places, we say, we only do this
for the cash. It feels substantial wadded in our
pockets but we dare not do the math against an entry-level
job with benefits all those years ago. We don’t
want anyone to own us. We’ll let ties hang
from our neck, but never a lanyard.
One of us wants to be a writer, one a comedian, one
a musician. In the daytime we make art or don’t, after
our hangovers subside, before ironing our uniforms.
Selling out is what we’re afraid of.
Our feet throb as the place clears out. We are hungry and
irritable and we call each other cunts and dicks,
sometimes in Spanish. We bitch about
how long we’ve been there, meaning today but also
meaning longer. How long is the cycle of making art
and avoiding the man, how long
can we dodge him before our bodies give out.
clock out: ties loosened, shirts
unbuttoned, tits out, hair down.
We take shots at the bar across
the street, tipping generously with damp bills pulled
from our aprons. We flirt with their bartender
if for no reason than he also
smells like meat and sweat.
We outdo each other with bad tipper stories, calculating
percentages in our heads like tutors. We don’t say
we’ve given up on the good in humanity because our livelihoods
depend on it and tomorrow is another gamble.
Tomorrow changes its clothes into today and
we chain smoke next to the dumpster, get
stoned in cars while our patrons suck down their
Diet Cokes and muse, where’s our server?
We drop trays of food, run wrong credit cards,
shatter hot glasses in the ice bin, looking around
with glassy eyes to see if anyone noticed.
We are going places, we say, we only do this
for the cash. It feels substantial wadded in our
pockets but we dare not do the math against an entry-level
job with benefits all those years ago. We don’t
want anyone to own us. We’ll let ties hang
from our neck, but never a lanyard.
One of us wants to be a writer, one a comedian, one
a musician. In the daytime we make art or don’t, after
our hangovers subside, before ironing our uniforms.
Selling out is what we’re afraid of.
Our feet throb as the place clears out. We are hungry and
irritable and we call each other cunts and dicks,
sometimes in Spanish. We bitch about
how long we’ve been there, meaning today but also
meaning longer. How long is the cycle of making art
and avoiding the man, how long
can we dodge him before our bodies give out.
Biography
|
Holly Pelesky (she/her) is a lover of spreadsheets, giant sandwiches, and handwritten letters. Her essays have appeared in The Nasiona and Jellyfish Review among other places. Her poems are bound in Quiver: A Sexploration. She holds an MFA from the University of Nebraska. She cobbles together gigs to pay off loans and eke by, refusing to give up this writing life. She lives in Omaha with her two sons.
Website: https://hollypelesky.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/hollypelesky |
