Well, I’m sitting at a Starbucks in Downstate New York but it might be Upstate, I’m not sure actually. The gorgeous are gorges, etc. I glow all modernist, all Perec or Baudelaire (though I couldn’t feel less French except for current scraggly ‘beard’ [cough, cough] and my tendency to glow Woody Allen and Bill Clinton and ceramic dachshunds and walks along most any river), just capturing notes of life and motes of life and all that is cardboard anti-hot device or caffeine or California roll-colored North Face jacket or archery bangs. Words are meant to capture, like poetry, or the cough of fresh fish, or a certain way of flash fiction. Snagging a scene, for example. This could be a great exercise if you teach. Sit and capture. Or if you don’t teach: sit and capture. At Starbucks, I capture two giant photos of waving, green fields on the wall and that makes no damn sense. They might be acres of corn or maybe wine or just Photoshop. I can hear everyone’s order because the only seat is astill the ordering stall/slaughtering chute. I have no Internet and I need Internet so here I perch, sun-off-snow sort of bathing in passing as intensification suggesting hoarding words, a leaping (sloth!) on itself the kitchen drawer of that sky separating us from the hemline or nearly touching features (stop that metaphor!), Velveeta, no less THINGS than drawn splashes of processed cheese across that sky. Messy writing, that previous sentence. The Starbucks is very busy and very Starbucks. It has a line of 8 but the line NEVER ENDS. It is always 8 people, replaced by 8 people, replaced by 8 people. Back-n-day, I actually used to be a registered nurse and the company gave me Starbucks stock and so I used to own Starbucks stock but I let it go because I loved it. I now regret that decision.

Yo. I wrote a text about frogs.

Yo. I wrote a new chapbook with frogs in the title but really it’s all about Velveeta. If you like Velveeta, give it a whirl.

How is Starbucks? It looks exactly like this:

They are hiring. They ask two questions on a chalkboard:

AVAILABLE WEEKENDS?

LIKE COFFEE?

But I warn you: these people are working HARD. (Though, in some jobs, working hard is better than working slow. Is Starbucks that way? I do not know. I had a job once where all I did all day was watch a train tanker unload. Hook up the suction. Sit. On chair. Upon gravel. All. Day. Good job for reading books. Forgot what I read, but most likely that was the summer of racing forms and Richard Brautigan. The company I worked for was a chemical company, if you must know. It took chaff and wheat or whatnot and mixed it with acid (arriving by train)  and other things and made a polymer. That very polymer makes Olympic running tracks and tennis shoe bottoms and missiles and yawns between the glass in your car windshield so the windshield will not shatter, if you must know, as you drive it into a tree or someone’s forehead or whatnot. I ate my first fried bologna sandwich on that hot Memphis summer. What else? Watched people steal things. Watched a guy get a 14 CENT check, which he tacked to the wall of the break room to make a point about “The Man.” (Stealing was also to subvert The Man.) Worked with a guy named Maxine. And Chester. Watched my friend fall into a vat of chemicals. (His body turned an eerie red, like glazed.) Was laid off during one of the depressions, the George Bush one, the one where the cars weren’t made so they didn’t need any fancy polymer in the windshields and we went to war with some country who bought our missiles so couldn’t sell for obvious patriotic reasons and who buys fancy tennis shoes when you can’t pay rent ? so well so go home Sean Lovelace, go home. I did so.)

Here is me eating a bologna sandwich:

Everyone is polite in this Starbucks. wow, it’s busy. I’d take a photo right now but don’t want to be that guy. No one is buying mugs or beans or Cohen Brothers movie CDs or really much fru-fru food at all, but the liquids are moving. Moving. Moving. A river.

Here, let’s go live: I’ll describe everyone in line, but it will have to be quick impressions because this place is vibrating like a lobbyist.

* GRANDE NON FAT MOCHA: green cashmere sweater. Matching cashmere cardigan with imitation jade buttons that match her real jade choker. Has: Plumpish, snowing skin. Naturally pink-pink lips turned eggplant with MAX Factor lipstick. Nose that flares gently up and out. Valley black eyes. Wide-set. Excessively lashed. Smells like gasoline. Said something I missed about Christmas and a dog. Reads Diagram magazine.

Here’s a photo of her elbow:

* LARGE ALL YOURS MY FRIEND: beanie hat, fluffy jacket brown, looks like he rifles medicine cabinets and picks up roadkill off the, well, road. Pops his neck like a knuckle and checks his fake-sincere smile in the heart of a Beyonce CD. Does not purchase the CD.

* VENTI PEPPERMINT NO-WHIP DECAF ICED COFFEE: WTF?? That’s quite the order. Possibly wearing black-n-white pajamas. This whole leggings thing has me confused, so I don’t know. (Get off my lawn!) Great legs. Legs of a panther, I’ll give her that. Gives off an odor of wet artificial grass, but possibly that’s the odor of Starbucks.

* SALTED GRANDE SOMETHING: You can salt shit here? Purse is huge and has green spikes. It looks like it’s fashioned of dinosaur. Wears UGGs the color of sand. Told the world to keep the change.

* TALL WATER (ha ha ha ha): Wears tight black Lycra pants with huge red red red bag. What’s in that bag, Alaska? Who the fuck orders a cup of water at Starbucks, quit trying to out-do us with your minimalism. I’m being mean, possibly.

* DIDN’T HEAR HIS ORDER: Dressed as if heading to Everest. BRIGHT blue jacket shoes built for kicking ass at a show attended by four screaming teenagers flash-mobbing fail at the mall. Stomach appears unsteady. Drinking a drink contemplatively.

* I WANT A SPRITE: Kid in crisp red and white soccer uniform. I’m suspicious how clean this uniform.

* VENTI UH DECAF ICED COFFEE: Penn State baseball cap jeans undistinguished black jacket. Seems pretty much normal whatever that means. No one is normal.

* GRANDE SOY SOMETHING: Wears sunglasses indoors black North Face jacket smiles too much. Crazy smile, skin flickering like a rest stop. Lycra pants show a lot of all.

* GRANDE NONFAT LATTE: Keeps mumbling “There are no tables…” (Correct) Lycra pants with running shoes her long brown hair is splattered friction all over her back (spaghetti) and if she could see that she wouldn’t care because she’s holding a kid in her arms and priorities, man, priorities, though she might still care a bit because parents try to be selfless but they are humans, too, man, humans. Her eyes are a stripe of lightning.

* VENTI SOMETHING MUMBLED COUPLE. She wears brown with black, he’s in inappropriate aged Converse low tops and they both sort of lean into each other, like touching all the time, which is a metaphor of how they are one and sort of touching or it pisses you off. Sickening or pretty sweet, your call.

* VANILLA GRANDE ICED SOMETHING. Beauty does not go out of style, so it’s irrelevant what she is wearing. Her breasts are ringing hammers on anvils, I’m sorry to be so crass. Loud.

* VENTI UNSWEETENED GREEN TEA: Mom in metallic sunglasses and Lycra over-laugher keeps saying “We’re going driving in a little bit!’ and “We’re going to eat lunch in a little bit!” Then says, “Wow, you have really good hands!” to the someone nearby and then she laughs and laughs and laughs. She’s wearing gray socks that go up to her knees, not sure why. Little kid sits on counter sucking on an apple juice box. Our bones are the same, but she wears her flesh without the wrongness of my flesh.

TRIPLE SHOT SURPRISE LATTE: Guy all morning has been over-eager and WAY too loud for Starbucks and talks WAY too much and he’s wearing a hat with a fake brown beard and he’s VERY talkative about the beard and the hat and after his order (a latte with a triple shot and he wouldn’t name the flavors of the shot–instead he yelled out, THROW WHATEVER IN THERE MAKE IT A TRIPLE SHOT SURPRISE!!! After he yelled people sort of shifted around and move further from away, you know).

AHHHHHHH!!!

I can’t do this anymore, the pace is amazing. Jesus, I’m starting to respect journalists who take notes or stenographers or anyone who writes on demand, period. My toes are exploding.

COFFEE, MEDIUM: still trying the ponytail at his age? Wow. He’s sitting there writing notes on a laptop. Unstable, nosy, eavesdropping?? Black hat, camouflage jacket, a freaking Hunger Games pin (his daughter probably bought it for him at Secret Santa so he wore it, but now he sort of likes it). Black Puma shoes, no socks.

He is. Hunched over, right by the cashier.

Weird.

Well, it takes all kinds.