Portside

Economica

By Tony Hoagland   

  
The waiter in the expensive restaurant
gets tipped nine dollars for pouring a glass of wine.
The waitress in the hash joint
gets a dollar twenty-five for delivering
three plates of scrambled eggs with hash browns,
toast, Canadian bacon, biscuits and gravy,
plus medium OJs for two and coffee for everyone.
This is the condition of which Marx spoke,
which has forged the deformed world,
to which you are obedient,
-as the bill arrives,
and the credit card is signed and run,
and the receipt sticks out its little tongue
and you feel that small frisson which comes
from being ever so much on top of it
as in the foyer of the restaurant, Andre
wishes you a very good evening sir, indeed,
and clicks his heels;
as in the diner, with no one watching,
the waitress scrubs at a stain on the tabletop
and laughs at something
nobody hears but her.
 

Tony Hoagland’s books include What Narcissism Means to Me, Unincorporated Persons of the Late Honda Dynasty, and Donkey Gospel. He has received the Mark Twain Award, the Jackson Poetry Prize, and the O.B. Hardisson Prize for teaching. His second book of essays, Twenty Poems That Could Save America, was published in 2014. He publishes frequently in The Sun magazine.