Community Café

Community Café We take little notice on this mild night of the one who arrives in black ski mask—hooded womb, solitary confinement, knit cell equipped with food slot. We do not note if the walk is the stride of a male or the slide of a female since we know both sexes eat, both find their ways to this counter window, unstained, unglassed, just another hole, really. We do not remark on the jive in the step, the shuffle or limp, the height or the weight. We do not require fingerprints. We do not record whether or not the biped likes what is offered, the chicken and noodles, canned pears and peas, whether the meal is taken through rasps or grunts, questions or whimpers or if instead the table is mute. We are busy with our ladles, scoops, our large spatulas, larger trays, the tater tots we scrape and juggle, wobble onto plates, with the pouring, dolloping, wiping, the accounting of spoons and forks. ß Mary M. Brown Poetry 141 Author biography Mary M. Brown teaches literature and creative writing at Indiana Wesleyan University and is an editor of The Steinbeck Review. Her poems have recently appeared in Four Chambers, Quiddity, Christianity Today, American Life in Poetry, and on the Poetry Foundation website. According to Kierkegaard, Christianity is not a consolation but a demand. A few days ago while walking, something made itself known in me— I neither welcomed it nor fled but felt the press of its heart on mine. We belong together now, We need each other’s beating. ß Jennifer Wallace Author biography Jennifer Wallace teaches at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. She is a poetry editor at The Cortland Review. Her poems have appeared in literary journals, anthologies, exhibition catalogs, and galleries. CityLit Press published her book of poems and photographs, It Can be Solved by Walking, in 2012. 142 Christianity & Literature 64(1) ...