Psychic Restaurant

FRANCIS RAVEN

Of course, I used have this
Business dream, this get rich scheme
Of opening a psychic restaurant:

You'd walk in.
A hostess would seat you
And you would immediately realize
That you were sitting at your favorite table.
Before you knew it
You would be served something strange,
You might protest, you might even throw
Some of it
At the waitress,

But in the end
You would taste some,
Maybe a tidbit of truffle-infused custard
Or tomato sherbet
And you would invariably realize
That it was exactly what you needed.

That's the gimmick, you see, the cooks know
Exactly what you require.  They know
Whether you want an important or
A comforting meal.  You know
That you are going to a psychic restaurant,
But beyond that
The entire meal consists of
A series of revelations
That you don't really know yourself.

Francis Raven's first novel, Inverted Curvatures, will be published in fall 2005 by Spuyten Duyvil.  Poems of his have been published in Mudlark, Conundrum, Untitled, Pindeldyboz, Big Bridge, Le Petite Zine, and Can We Have Our Ball Back? Essays and articles of his have been published in Jacket, Clamor, In These Times, The Fulcrum Annual, Rain Taxi, Sauce, and Pavement Saw.

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