When Meat Was Meat

1920, when meat was meat, when retirees

in St. Pete, Florida's sunshine town,

played a mean cutthroat shuffleboard

at Mirror Lake, when the century

was rickety rickety as a cable car

climbing some San Francisco street,

her eyes shone, my grandma, prettiest

female sweet in the history of Benjy's

Fine Time Cajun Cuisine, her eyes

like opals the moment she spotted him,

her oldest dream, a real Frenchman,

to take an open table in her section,

this young man, my grandpa, who ordered

gumbo and jambalaya both, singing

he had found the queen of queens,

her honeyed breath layering the neatest,

freshest, best-looking, most perfect helping

of whiskey-bread pudding he'd ever seen.

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