Poem by Elizabeth Farris

LEFTOVER PEOPLE

Warren’s the muscle
able to clutch the side of the dumpster.
Lifts himself up,
over and in.

There’s perfectly good eating food in the alley.

He raises up what is still good
and we wait until it’s all there
before divvying it up.

Always when dark after closing time.

We learned to stick to the doubtful places behind the restaurants,
places without Keep Out signs.
Taking what’s thrown out isn’t criminal,
but trespassing is.

One night we had a hankering for Italian
when Norberto,
dishwasher at Café Italiano appeared -
a trayful of lettuce in his hands.
He knew it wouldn’t make it through the night,
sensed us there in the shadows,
and set it down outside the back door.

He’s the one who got caught that night -
cursing interspersed with pleads.
Italian threats,
Mexican sobs.

A few days later
we found empty milk crates waiting for morning’s delivery.
Warren stood atop a stack of two
since lately he’s been losing his strength.
Ready to enter the dumpster
but frantic banging on the steamed-up window
made us all scatter.

The owner stepped out, saw nothing.

​We kept crouching for a long long while
until Norberto appeared.
Sweat ran off his forehead,
the red of his fingers crept all the way up his arms
where his soaked shirtsleeves rolled.
In his hands, containers of pasta
stiff from sitting too long,
sauce,
broken bread sticks.

Norberto washes six days a week.
Last chore of the night
he turns the chairs bottoms up and grabs a broom.
He leaves the dustbin full of sweepings outside the back door.
Before we empty it for him
into the dumpster,
we sift through
and find fallen coins from customer’s pockets.

Always there are coins when Norberto’s on duty.

Elizabeth Farris holds an MA in Creative Writing from Victoria University, Wellington New Zealand. Her work appears in Flash Frontier, Wild Roof Journal, Turbine 15, Barstow and Grand, Rue Scribe, Wild Greens Magazine, and elsewhere. A dual citizen, she divides her time between the mountains of Arizona and a small town in New Zealand.

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