#carry-out

Monroe Street

The current situation, with restaurants packing up take-out meals for customers, makes me think it’s time for a repost of this one — with a few additions.

Selling prepared food ready to be eaten off the premises, known as carry-out or take-out, is as old as the restaurant itself. In Colonial days, James Hearn of New York City advertised that “families may every day be provided with plates of any…

The phone, Greasy cord around my Fingers twirling, rings And I must say hello. You sigh, the hardness of Today’s paperwork, such an Unnerving week—like Last week only This week crawling to An end as you remember Mercury switch sliding: We deliver. Licking your lips while Your fingers are dialing, Oh yes, you shall be Delivered.

I say hello. Tell me what you Want: the number 61, 74, and 25.  Some chili oil, spicy mustard, and chopsticks.  Extra soy sauce.

The phone rings, you Receive a sing song hello, My starved hello.  Dispatching Delivery Friday night to Lampposts infested with Girls in the arms of boys They are not dating: Hungry and inebriated Calling on a pay phone, Listening from me to pick up.

I get paid in little things Left under dead tables: Mostly toothpicks, cookie Fortunes, and extra Soy sauce. The phone rings once And I have already said Hello.

Inside, a couple demands An early check, In a hurry, chested full Of digestive juices. In the kitchen I grab the receipt as the Front door bell dismisses A copper goodbye. They are running: Nefarious red string bells Cluttering up another Farewell and me, I am Running.  Running and Yelling, still too sing song As I beg them to come back.

Out in the night, my Voice dies and coldness Sweeps up a syllable or Two in exhalation.  Cars Stream a steady wheeze Of whites and blacks and Grays.  Silent cinema, I Am looking open-eyed As the storefront glares And nothing out here is Moving but the street Festering along.

When I was growing up, I thought my name was fairly manageable and easy to pronounce. Lillian didn’t seem all that hard, and my last name, McTernan, isn’t common — but it is phoenetic. It’s pretty straightforward, or so I thought. But, as it turns out, this assumption was completely untrue. Apparently my name is not unlike this train station in Wales!

This has taken many hilarious forms over the…