Pete and Repete's

 Pete and Repete's

Back when I threw away the North, sick of being

Honeybunch Kaminski, 

and came South to be the sweeter, 

smilin'-for-a-dime grits-totin' Rita,

I wrote some verse,

perverse but not diverse

about your tiger eyes because

the ram was a disguise and

I knew you had the spotted skin

big cats can never change--

and so you showed me.

Down the highway from Nelda's

where I trickled out sweet tea and pepper sauce

(7 different varieties) stiffed

by shriveled 'pokes who found me too remiss

in my amateur bottomless
refills, I heard there was a joint

called Pete and Repete's and wondered if
there the hamburger dills were greener, but ended up
at Girlie's to learn the trick

I wouldn't turn, hustling joe and pancakes

in the dusty starlight night.

I  missed you on the day

you came up plumbing,

found instead my cat-eyed body-man  

deep in the buckwheat thicket

his pulse on mine in temporary candlelight 

he never understood, a repulse of who he was
that couldn't stay. Main squeeze: Tvarscki, cigarillo

and the thousand fifty lies that kept him

shiny as hammered chrome. Those Karo eyes

that still saw only Honey in the wild bunch

gone in the black blizzard,

tho the afterlight remains, pouring a bottomless cup of shadows

repeating down a dead-end red dirt road.

~February 2015

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Challenge: Get Listed

Grapeling (Michael of it could be that)  provides us with a list of words that reflect each other in spelling but have no meanings in common, and asks us to use at least two of them or invent a few--I have tried to do both, though I have strayed a bit from the pathway in this, my autobiographical indulgence and not very serious cautionary tale of the Lovely Rita, non-Meter Maid.

optional musical acompaniment

Process Notes(and/or Spoilers): I worked at several diners including the ones named(except for the famed "Pete and Repete's Restaurant" in Purcell) when I first came to Oklahoma in the seventies.  From what I can find out on google, they all seem to be defunct. I couldn't stand being constantly hit on under my own name, and stole and wore the name tag Rita, left behind by a less stoic ex-waitress, thus assuming my first pre-Hedgewitchian alias. (And yes, the slogan I wore in a strategic spot on my uniform apron said : 'They're stacked better.'  ) My current husband's company did all the plumbing work for the Girlie chain, but we never met until much later, under very different circumstances. But that's another tale.

'poke is short for 'cowpoke' and for those who haven't known the joys of waiting table, 'stiffed' refers to not receiving a tip.

"Black blizzard" is a 30's term for the worst dust storms of that era.

The character Honeybunch Kaminski, by counterculture cartoonist R. Crumb, was one with whom I strongly identified at the time.

Images: courtesy google image search Cup of Joe source
Girlie's source
No copyright infringement intended--will remove at request of copyright holder.