The Friday Poem on 27/05/22
We chose Christine Naprava’s incredible poem, ‘I’ll Know I’ve Made It When Going to a LongHorn Steakhouse on a Sunday Evening in the Dead of Winter Doesn’t Depress the Hell Out of Me’ as our Friday Poem this week because it is kooky, meandering, expansive, and full of contemporary detail. It manages to be both serious and funny at the same time — oh those grits! — and somehow speaks to us of the human condition. We love the tone and the atmosphere and the subtle undercurrent of knowing desperation. And the grits — especially the grits.
I’ll Know I’ve Made It When Going to a LongHorn Steakhouse on a Sunday Evening in the Dead of Winter Doesn’t Depress the Hell Out of Me
There’s tremendous hurt
in knowing
that in this booth
I will never be complete.
If I cared to understand
the stages of metamorphosis,
then I’d say I was a Stage I (egg)
who entered LongHorn
thinking she was a Stage 2 (larva).
The decor in this place
is as heavy
as this meal
is about
to make me feel.
I’ve never tried grits,
but I imagine they’re
what’s weighing me down.
For anyone who’s not me,
imagine being completely enveloped
by the scarabs in The Mummy (1999),
then imagine the scarabs are grits.
For anyone who’s never seen
The Mummy (1999),
imagine quicksand,
then imagine the quicksand
is grits.
They don’t even offer grits
on the menu here,
but suddenly
my suddenly-cool-again Uggs
are overflowing with them,
always-salty-never-sweet grits
that will eventually harden
and cement me to the floor
of this on-earth Hell
disguised as a LongHorn Steakhouse.
Our waiter is attentive enough,
and I’ve had worse steak,
fatty slabs steeped in slippery brown oil,
but does our waiter know
that if the dreams I have
about my grade-school bully
were a Netflix movie
it’d be a gritty enemies-to-lovers Netflix movie
in which one S.O. (me) loves harder than the other
and that my pining for my adult bully’s admiration
clearly stands for my need to be accepted by others,
and does our waiter know
that I won’t let any man I want to have a future with
see me in fluorescent or natural lighting
but more so natural
because to me what’s natural is never gentle,
is always harsh and unforgiving,
and does our waiter know
how grits are made,
what grits actually are?
Does our waiter know
the four stages of metamorphosis
and if so,
which stage
does he think I’m in?
My inability to make eye contact
screams egg.
My jerky hand and head movements
scream sticky-larva-straitjacket.
The third stage —
I can’t think it,
can’t say it aloud.
I don’t want to make our waiter laugh.
I want our waiter to appraise my soul.
