when Gramms had her hip surgery,
it wasn’t good, craft coffee,
a single-origin light roast pour over,
ready for me in the flickering fluorescent waiting room,
it was the bad stuff,
the burnt and cheap and stale stuff
that kept us awake.

when we shot across the deserts
of America in the middle of the night,
fleeing to California for the winter,
it wasn’t the third-wave shops
open at 2:33am to keep us going;
it was the gas station pot
sitting out since noon.

the good, craft coffee is good and delicious
and marketed well.
it’s cozy.
it’s a man who’s never had dirt under his nails.
it’s someone who is nice at you but a little pretentious.
but the bad coffee, the real stuff,
the stuff that tamed the West beside open fires,
ready in bus terminals and hospitals and break rooms,
as black and burnt as Gehenna,
of questionable origin —
keeps the world spinning like a top and shows up
like a vigilante.

e

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