At Denny's, America's favorite restaurant

At Denny’s, America’s Favorite Restaurant®

Grading essays; french fries

Late, Heinz joins me at my booth

Ladies, careful as surgery

Scootch into theirs.  Voices near eighty

Their make-up, fragrant

Raise shields of colorful dishes

Glossy as lipstick, in Denny’s

America’s favorite restaurant

By windows large as maps

Worlds away.  La familia:

Baby hispanica, pigtails

Takes smiles from the ladies

Her mother, father

The picture of struggle

She is expecting, sullen

He wears a work-worn stare

His mother and father still

Sit by fires in a smoky valley

Considering America on TV

And glossy restaurant chains

Their chiseled Aztecan boy

Wrought with macho

Steak knifes his comida

Like the pics in la carta

Silk spice pie, Silk

Road caravans arrive

And camels breathe hot
In Denny’s parking lot

Diaspora of hungry planet
Unites at Denny’s to eat
Together from whence
We came.  Olduvai, the caves

Lascaux.  Gladness evolves

Onto faces in hijab as waitress
Leans desserts across an oblong
Earth and all hear the soundtrack