Talk at the Diner

by Brett Rutherford

Went to the City a few weeks ago —

all clean now since those homeless folks

took off and all found jobs somewhere.

Not a speck of garbage on the street.

The beggars were gone too. One drunk
I’d always see not far from the door

of some bar or liquor store, a nod and

a wink when he’d say, “Some money

for food, for Jesus’ sake.” You knew

just where your quarter wound up.

Well, he’s gone, and all the others,

the ones who pretended crazy or played

a scritch-scatchy violin for dollars.

Right here in town, by the tracks,

there used to be some Black folks,

but they up and moved last year.

Some factory must’ve given them jobs.

That Mrs. Hernandez who run the store,

the dirty one that no one would go in,

her place is all boarded up now.

They took her at night, seeing how

she had no right to be in America.

Remember those two men

who lived together, and how we’d talk,

tryin’ to guess what they did at night?

They up and moved; so did those gals

we thought were kind of funny

with their short hair and all those dogs.

Used to see that bus go back and forth

talking folks in wheelchairs out

and back from the shopping mall.

Since budget cuts it doesn’t run.

I wonder where those cripples went.

It takes all kinds, I say. We had ours:
that old man with the messed-up lawn

full of peace signs. That atheist poet
who’d cuss it out with the preacher

right here in the diner, and won to rights

more than half the time. Haven’t seen any

of those oddballs in the long while,

but the church is getting a new steeple.

Downtown was rough at night,

least in the old days, hell, just

last year it was still bad. Bikers came,

and bad women, and men you knew

from their complexion would slit

your throat in an alley if they could.

No one in the downtown taverns now

but farmers and red-cap hunters.

A woman can walk and not worry.

Sure I see lights, and hear sirens,

so late at night I don’t get up
to go out and see what it is.

They’re going to bulldoze a lot

of those yellow-taped houses.

Young people will move in, I’m sure.

Nice people.

Funny how all those other folks

keep moving away.

Not that I mind.