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Published: Tue Oct 15 1974
Eva Lundsager, Were now like (detail), 2021, oil on canvas
AGNI 3 Food Arts Work
Restaurant Interlude

A menu of profuse activity: eating,
dressing for dinner, picking up a fork.
The distant dinner bell grooms him for a movie.
He digs into caves of meat.
The highway slopes
into his random village of grocery stores.
Along the highway, meat.
This is the first time he has stopped eating.

But in the movie
he will be eating everything in sight.
In the restaurant he will be gesturing.
The waitress feels her bread.
She smacks her lips at the camera.
Stooping toward the soup,
she peels the tablecloth back along her seam.
In the restaurant he will be gesturing famously.

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F. Keith Wahle received an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His publications include Almost Happy: Poems (Rumba Train Press, 1980) and A Choice of Killers: Poems 1972–1990 (Morgan Press, 1998). Known for his public performances accompanied by interpretive dancer Judith Mikita, he currently resides in Cincinnati, Ohio. (updated 7/2010)

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