Nate Logan

poetry

Photo by Ritojnan Mukherjee

GRAND FORKS CENTO (1987-1991)

1.

My idea of fun is eating a hamburger loaded with toppings.

I was pleased the waitress refrained from asking, “Are you alone this evening?”

I didn’t ask her about the vodka bottle, but I assume it was water she put on the plants.

The menu is flawed with misspellings, including “Ceaser,” “avacado,” “achovie,” and “Rueben.”

It’s amazing what you can stack on one small plate if you really set your mind to it.

So I ate them all and looked out the window to see where my self-control had gone.

Uff da.

Still, the whole world isn’t on a diet.


2.

There is piano music in the background.

In the evening, there’s a soft light from the hanging lamps above each table.

The soup was OK, but no one turned cartwheels over it.

Bob Peterson of Bismarck had his mind set on the roast caraway duck, but it was not to be.

“Lately,” he said, “we’ve been paying more attention to salads.”

Men don’t get exuberant. 


3.

A friend of mine says she wonders if anyone ever orders those chickens.

She says she met Brian in a nightclub in Florida on Feb. 16, 1988.

At 6:20p.m., a man in a dark jacket came in and was turning the lights up and down.

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Source: Grand Forks: A History of American Dining in 128 Reviews by Marilyn Hagerty

Nate Logan is the author of Wrong Horse (Moria Books, 2024) and Inside the Golden Days of Missing You (Magic Helicopter Press, 2019). He lives in Indiana. You can find him online at nateglogan.tumblr.com, on Instagram or BlueSky.

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