Placemats

Placemats

Sitting in the restaurant
eating meals paid for by my parents,
Eating meals I have served before,
Meals my parents have served before,
A line of hospitality,
Work ethics crossed off with
a permanent marker
making sure nothing gets missed,
Getting scolded for stacking plates;
being seconded to follow the etiquette
of a class my grandparents try to belong in,
Preening for a mirror that will never
look at them twice,
Seeing the burn marks reflected on the
palms of the waitress, on the palms of mine,
On the palms of my parents as they refuse the ice,
Getting scolded for not stacking plates,
Fingers forever perfumed with vinegar,
Pricked onto receipt spikes,
Wishing for aurora, like Aurora,
Begging for sleep, descending onto leftovers,
Left over, forgotten until the end of service.

Notes

Notes

Below are some notes about this piece, including the thoughts and external inspirations that occurred during its creation. 
Bear in mind, this is simply what I was thinking of when I wrote these poems and what they mean to me. If you interpreted them differently, that does not diminish how you felt as the reader nor the correctness/incorrectness of what you were thinking. 
Placemats [2024] is a prose poem about instances in hospitality work. I have vivid memories of my grandma getting annoyed with me and being very forceful about not stacking plates or cups, it was the job of the servers and doing that job for them is rude. It wasn’t part of etiquette. I love my grandma dearly, and the lifestyle she has made for herself is beautiful and has been beneficial to my own growth of cultural understandings, but it’s in moments like this that we clearly have very different understandings on being polite members of society. Both of my parents survived through their formative teen-ages and twenties by working as servers, bar tenders and hotel admins. I spent a majority of my young adult years as a waitress and bartender in RSLs, pubs, holes-in-the-wall, and five star name-droppers. In comparing my life with theirs, I know the only similarities we have is the morality of work I inherited from them. I often wonder what sort of people they would have become if stress hadn’t paved the way for them. 
prose

Below are some notes about this piece, including the thoughts and external inspirations that occurred during its creation.
Bear in mind, this is simply what I was thinking of when I wrote these poems and what they mean to me. If you interpreted them differently, that does not diminish how you felt as the reader nor the correctness/incorrectness of what you were thinking. Poetry is subjective, and so is being alive.