Mais Bien Sur, There Are No Strangers

--a response to O’Hara’s many eating poems in his book, Lunch Poems

But Peoria is nothing like New York, O’Hara.
People in Peoria eat at home
by themselves
scrunched into an arm chair
watching the movers and the shakers on TV
remain still and unshook.

In my scrunchable arm chair
I’ve considered setting my small table for phantom company
(not actual ghosts, rumor is they don’t eat)
just as Eleanor Rigby probably did each night
each night
waiting for strangers
like all the rest of us
faces like lightening bugs
in lightly perforated jars

Well, aren’t we? Spending time with our acquainted
who are not enough for us, nor we for them, still, we drink

lukewarm tea and inquire about kids soccer games
and marital woe (only the woe is interesting)
knocking off the hours,
looking over ears and under shoulders as inconspicuously as possible,
expecting someone
new
to parade graciously into our kitchen
sit,
and eat.