McPoems

100 Cheeseburgers

An elderly man you rec­og­nize as some­one who moves slowly and pays for every­thing with change scrounged from his pock­ets sur­prises you when he pulls out a wad of bills and orders 100 cheese­burg­ers. You get him to repeat him­self a cou­ple of times, 100 cheese­burg­ers, 100 cheese­burg­ers he says, tells you he intends to freeze them, they’ll get him through the win­ter, no need for pesky walks on cold days, no dan­ger of slip­ping and break­ing a hip. 100 cheese­burg­ers will keep me going for a lit­tle while longer, at least, I don’t need much.

The Lottery

It starts off with the woman
who you pre­dict — cor­rectly—
will order a gar­den salad and diet coke
though you also know she’ll ask
for two pack­ets of the super fat­ten­ing dress­ing.
All that day you know who’ll order
fish burg­ers, chicken nuggets, ham­burg­ers
with or with­out the cheese.
A co-worker begs you to con­cen­trate
on that week’s lot­tery num­bers,
asks you to do it for his new­born daugh­ter,
but no mat­ter how hard you focus,
you can only tell that in a few moments
he’ll want a straw­berry shake.

Local Attraction

When the tour group of non-English speak­ers arrives
you find your­self act­ing out the orders,
flap­ping your arms for chicken,
moo­ing for every burger, re-enacting an epic strug­gle
with a fish­ing pole when­ever some­one orders a filet.
For those few min­utes you are the cen­tre of the uni­verse,
more impor­tant than French fries, more impor­tant
than mas­cots, extra nap­kins, mul­ti­ple dip­ping sauces.
For the first time in your life you under­stand
what it’s like to be a celebrity, a local attrac­tion,
the most pho­tographed thing in the room.

Drive-Thru

Same guy at 7 a.m. for break­fast,
a lit­tle before noon for lunch,
once again while you work over­time
and he orders din­ner.
Some days he dri­ves through
a fourth time for dessert,
pre­tends he doesn’t know you,
you don’t know him.

Halloween

A drunk clown demands free French fries
tells you to hurry the hell up
and don’t for­get the ketchup.
Superman com­plains his burger is cold,
Luke Skywalker asks for more salt.
After her third hot fudge sun­dae
you real­ize Wonder Woman’s
bul­let­proof bracelets
can’t pro­tect her from everything.