Just Lunch

At lunchtime, interrogators cross the street,
walk by the golden boughs, get in line
at the counter. There is a sixteen year old
girl, wearing a sun cap, who smiles every day,
serving their country. Sometimes they wash
their hands first, in the restroom in the back,
and think what’s it going to be today, Mcnuggets
Quarter Pounder or Big Mac. Sitting down

at the undersized tables, they talk like little kids
would, about baseball, batman, and the girl
behind the counter young enough
to be their daughter. They eat, one of them

collects polly pockets for the kid
back home. Sometimes he glances
at the empty pirate ship in the corner
that another, with his giant hull
broke the other day when he tried
to imitate skull island. Days stretch

on, infinitely, at lunch break, they grow
more and more into the infants they left
back home. They laugh and tease
and in the cartoonish light
the counter girl says ‘cheers’ when

she picks up the gold nuggets
that flew around, to save
the new twister carpet she and
the kitchen boys play on
when the evening mounts.

Martijn Benders, 10-08-2008

This is a protest poem. Anyone can publish it freely, it has no copyright, provided
that it’s published without alterations and with my name under it.

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