Edward Hopper's Automat
       

The Automat serves the original and loneliest fast food.
Drop in a coin. There could be no one else in the world,
just you and something made somewhere else.
Th9 oung woman sits at the round table,
rows of reflections of lights seeming neither inside
nor out, in the huge black beyond of the window.
The door and the radiator stand to the left, neither
managing to convince the other of warmth or escape.
Her green coat laps open, half between arriving
and leaving. Holding her cup suspended
with her bare hand, the other gloved, she is neither
drinking nor not drinking. Yet on her head is the most
yellow and chic cloche, round and drooping.
It's awkward, this leftover hope, shading the downcast
eyes. Yet, if you approach her, tell her it will be all right—
maybe nothing is wrong. Or maybe what's wrong
is the best thing, her possession, what can't be bought
at the Automat. Maybe she's gone too far to want
to be distracted now. Maybe she can see from here
the internal workings, where all is sorted and rearranged.

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Copyright © 2019 Fleda Brown All rights reserved
from Southern Poetry Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission