Closing Time at the Second Avenue Deli

This is the time of night at the delicatessen

when the manager is balancing

a nearly empty ketchup bottle

upside-down on a nearly full ketchup bottle

and spreading his hands slowly away

from the perfect balance like shall I say

a priest blessing the balance, the achievement

of perfect emptiness, of perfect fullness? No,

this is a kosher delicatessen. The manager

is not like. He is not like a priest,

he is not even like a rabbi, he

is not like anyone else except the manager

as he turns to watch the waitress

discussing the lamb stew with my wife,

how most people eat the whole thing,

they don't take it home in a container,

as she mops up the tables, as the

cashier shall I say balances out?

No. The computer does all that. This

is not the time for metaphors. This is the time

to turn out the lights, and yes,

imagine it, those two ketchup bottles

will stand there all night long

as acrobatic metaphors of balance,

of emptiness, of fullness perfectly contained,

of any metaphor you wish unless

the manager snaps his fingers at the door,

goes back, and separates them for the night

from that unnatural balance, and the store goes dark

as my wife says should we take a cab

or walk, the stew is starting to drip already.

Shall I say that the container can not

contain the thing contained anymore? No.

Just that the lamb stew is leaking all across town

in one place: it is leaking on the floor of the taxi-cab,

and that somebody is going to pay for this ride.

From Poems Seven, by Alan Dugan. Copyright © by Alan Dugan. Reprinted by permission of Seven Stories Press.

ALAN DUGAN'S last book, Poems Seven: New and Complete Poetry, was the winner of the National Book Award in 2001.

KEITH ALTHAUS'S poems have appeared widely in such magazines as The New Yorker, Poetry, and APR. He is the author of Rival Heavens (Provincetown Arts, 1993).

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