Member-only story
The Wrong Restaurant
A poem
You know it’s a mistake
as soon as you walk in
and the smell of over-cooked zucchini
wafts past.
That’s the moment when
you should turn and leave
but your mother brought you up
to be polite, even in restaurants
where the word salmonella
hovers over the food bays.
They send you to the end
of the buffet, where salads
coagulate in plastic bowls,
and when you choose lettuce (safe)
and risk the blue cheese dressing,
you can see the blue
was left out today.
The beef is a sad slab
of stringy grey, the gravy
coloured water, the baked potato
in foil weighs a ton.
Gaudy desserts line up
chorus girls long past
their best dancing days.
In your red vinyl booth
the meal is all you dreaded –
half-cold, potato half-raw,
salad wilted and sorry.
The book you brought for company
fails to distract you
and you…
