Jenna Dee
Cosmology

There are water bottles sitting in a cart
at Primo Cappuccino at Penn Station.
The cart is crooked and the wheels
are unaligned with the tile floor.

Each low-held bag or nervous umbrella
shifts the cart farther from the counter.
The suspense is maddening. The poor
aesthetics of the unstraightened wheels

were enough to put me at unease. And now,
as the gap between the counter and cart widens,
the cart is on track to depart the cafe and arrive
at the Amtrak-only waiting area by noon.

However: I take the practical perspective
that in no way would anyone would allow the car
to be far enough from the counter to obstruct the way.
As my impatience grows, I long for an especially wide set of hips

to come over and bump the cart, break its steadfast inertia.
I long to ask the man who mops, what will it take for you
to put the cart back against the counter? If the looming gap
between the counter and the cart is not enough to scare him

into putting the cart back against the counter, he must be waiting
for a specific event, perhaps a sneeze, as a sign to put it back.
He extends good will to me by lifting only the chairs around me,
and not the one I sit in, to mop under the table.

I reflect on the straw wrapper that fell into the crack
that I had planned on leaving there since no one could see it
anyways. What an onerous task we have before us,
keeping the universe together this way.

<< Back to Issue 14, 2010