“Don’t get above your raising.”— Karen Salyer McElmurray

Water falls into
the deep fryer, tidaling
towards my shaking hands.

Singed skin still serving,
brown, sprawling splatters sink in
everyone has them.

From drive-thru speakers,
music caught inside the car,
today, Chopin plays.

We work like dancers
graceful folds and tucks, buns pinned,
lettuce put to bed.

To argue back is
to slow down, to say your pain
demands us to pause.

I dare love this job,
burritos, burgers, fries, drinks,
I’m never hungry.

We feed each other’s
families when they roll in,
take, fill your body.

In this new country,
we can eat whatever falls,
clumsy workers all.

Non-slip shoes, hair as
hazard, netted up, slacks that
bend, stretch, pull and reach.

Uniformed people,
a tag, a category,
sheered in the same way.

Flattened forehead curls,
number two with some ketchup
red lips, working girls.

My face sheens with grease,
my calves twitch, spasm, roiling,
back curves from serving.

Initiated,
part of the frenzied bodies,
earned a beer and clink.

Folded in, learned,
I understand my mother,
why she thumbs her feet.

When one of us fights,
we all fight, swarming the lot,
stretching in swamp sync.

I have a people,
brown-knuckled, sun-built forces,
gravel sands my cheek.

I get my ass beat
by a waiting customer,
I see her work boots.

I read in the lot,
Yeats and Blake, turning each page,
with delicate flicks.

Between the rushes,
I teach Maria English,
lips, puckered posies.

When I mop the floors
I think of what I could be,
small, then large, circles.

We get reminders,
lock the bathrooms so unhoused
people can’t use them.

We are taught that they
are our enemies here, told
to barely serve them.

when they present their
haggard, hot change and ripped bills,
don’t incentivize.

Miserly scoops, pours.
One man lives behind the trees,
he buys for his friends.

Imagine having
nothing, and yet you still give,
booth huddled, merry.

We’re scared to say no,
sure, we’ll take that extra shift,
open, close the store.

I’m paid eight-fifty,
off the clock, I pick up change
in the solemn lot.

The math never squares,
forty hours of rushes,
I’ve still made nothing.

I’m not above this,
blotched Sacagawea coin,
rich under nail muck.

We cry, even Madge,
thirty-years here, working with
a coal black hand brace.

I needed to know
women could still break apart
and come into work.

When I’m too slow on
drive-thru, they put me out on
the side street, waving.

Free fries my sign says,
one car slows, a man leans out,
a pinch, then a grab.

I tell Amores,
women, broiler gathered, heat,
it won’t destroy you.

I have mothers here,
Virgin Mary candle lit,
holy deep fryer.

A box falls on Ann,
opening the side of her
cheek; clock out we shout.

She has daughters here,
napkins frenzy her face, neck,
stovetop blood boils.

Bathroom smeared in shit,
mirrors blacked out, sink flooded,
forget how to breathe.

This body exhausts,
Grease so dense, you close your eyes,
dreams, please, appear here.

The lovely village
is burning, people smothered,
I need to leave them.

I hose the ball pit,
some float and bob to the top,
others lose their shape.

With rich kids I try
to be their friend, extra fries,
show them I smile too.

Photo by Mahavir Shah on Unsplash