I'm old. Really old.
I spread my shopping bags
on two chairs, immune
to the waiter's stare.
I say I own this one---
the Immortality Coffee Shop.
I advertise: "Eat here
and you never eat anywhere

else." Jam, muffins,
a vase shaped, amazingly,
like a sphinx. Did I say sphinx?
Maybe, outsmarted by someone
mildly Oedipal, it leapt
from the table creating
a thousand ceramic

gravestones. The busboy sweeps
it up while the waiter
seats sainted mothers,---as if
mothers could be devils---
here, where the dead
already spill their secrets.