Wish it had been the R that fell, she thought. Then it would say DINE, like the food was good, like it was more than runny eggs and meatloaf. But it was the I, and everyone called it the DEE-ner, like some hillbilly joint. Jake said it gave the place character, didn’t even know where the I had blown to after all these years.
She hated waiting tables. Her mama said she was uppity. “Worst thing we did was name you Chelsea after that foreign place,” her mama said. “You get off your high horse and make peace with staying here.” But she never would. Never! She’d get a little money ahead and clear out. Go where Chelsea was an OK name, and DINE was what folks did, and tips were more than a quarter.
“You gonna stub that smoke and get back to work? I ain’t paying you to be on break all day.”
“When you gonna put the I back, Jake?”
“No time soon, Chelsea girl. No time soon.”
– Sarah Russell
First published in Rusty Truck
Sarah Russell Poetry 
Brilliant! Love this one, Sarah 🙂
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Hey, thanks Ryan!
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A dearth of words…. a depth of meaning!!!!
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Thanks, Bob. When I sent it to Rusty Truck, I told the editor I didn’t know if it was a prose poem or flash fiction. He wrote back and said it didn’t matter — that he just liked it. My kind of editor! Then I turned it into a haibun for dVerse.
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Always liked this story Sarah
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Good one, Sarah. Too bad I could never get Chuck to pursue a book.
Sent from my iPhone
>
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Yeah. For other readers, this was originally written for a themed poetry reading to go with Chuck Fong’s wonderful photography on Diners in New England. We were hoping for a coffee table book to come out of the project, but it didn’t come to pass. You can see Chuck’s work at http://www.fongstudio2.com/potpourri.html, although all of his diner series photos aren’t represented there.
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I love this! Excellent. :]
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Thanks, Al. She was a fun character to write about.
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I liked the descriptions of those characters. It could also pass as flash fiction.
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Yes, Rusty Truck published it as flash. I added the haiku for dVerse. I’m growing to really like the haibun form. Hope I don’t get kicked out for the resemblance to flash!
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That sounds like a real life story. If the food’s that bad, they might be better off leaving out the i. The haiku sounds like something Dorothy might say before the tornado hit. It makes an interesting prologue
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It’s fiction, Walter, but when I saw the photo display that these diner poems were a part of, there was a young woman who fit the character of Chelsea perfectly. Love it when that happens.
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Very clever, you put it all together
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I was transfixed … and I love the haiku!
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Thanks, Bev.
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Authentic character development in your haibun…I hope “uppity” Chelsea lives her dream!
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I hope so too, Lynn. I’m sort of fond of her!
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The contrast with the name and the diner with the missing letters is great, all is there to give me a story much longer than the flash
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Thanks a lot, Bjorn.
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This is a fun read. I like the daisy and oak tree comparison.
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Thanks so much, Sumana.
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So, so well done! Love the dialogue in the text part of the haibun!
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Thanks so much, Petru.
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when you gonna write the book Sarah?
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That’s so nice of you to say, Laura, but I don’t have the patience for writing a book. Trying for a chapbook of poems is as much ambition as I can muster. Maybe by 2018. I have most of the poems for one. Now to get them all together…
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I know what you mean – shame though as you paint characters so well
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I love everything about this…the contrasts of prose to dialogue to haiku, the subtitle, the missing letters, the character development…it comes together so brilliantly!
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Thanks so much, Mish!
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What a talent you have, Sarah! This character absolutely came alive in your haibun. I wasn’t reading it aloud but I could hear her voice in my head…you nailed the conversation, the colloquialisms, the personality. This is just an amazing piece of writing. And the line I LOVE in the poetic ending is “daisies distressed, withering.” This piece is absolutely cinematic!
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Thanks so much, Lillian. Chelsea and Jake were fun to bring to life.
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This is brilliant, Sarah!❤️
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Thanks a lot, Sanaa.
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