Pizza Shop
by Nick Rattner

1. Most of this poem lives as paperwork
2. in an IRS warehouse just outside Duluth,
3. but I imagine it is also the actual
4. soreness which spoke first of adulthood,
5. standing night after night on Linoleum
6. in front of a wide oven. A paper calendar
7. hangs from hooks on stainless-steel walls
8. of a kitchen through which I carry factory-
9. fresh sleeves of peperoni and gallon cans
10. of mushrooms. Yes, this is the dream:
11. a pizza to deliver, a Cutlass, and the state
12. pulling sky and snow into its mouth
13. with storm drains. Maybe it means
14. more than a dozen drunk college kids
15. beckoning me into the borderless county
16. of their casual disregard, into the simple
17. and somehow honorable humiliation
18. of a life shaped by others’ hunger,
19. and there is $4.25/hr. of a chance
20. that on inconsequential winter nights,
21. on poorly paved roads from houses
22. to the shop, snow and pebbles
23. my tires spray are shrapnel, blinding
24. the local gods who have never once
25. bothered with my name.