cooking hamburgers over an unforgiving grill at a fast food joint
sweat drips from my body
feel like the greasy hamburgers I serve.
a small cog in the assembly line of minimum wage workers in America
my only moments of freedom and creative self expression
spitting in the redneck truck driver’s french fries
whenever he mocks the hamburger helpers
who serve him food from a Chicago meat packing plant
almost as revolting as the one described
more than a half–century earlier in The Jungle.

my only haven in the heartless hamburger world
private moments scrubbing the toilets on my hands and knees
where I sleep or contemplate larger world issues
like Muhammed Ali, “ I ain’t got no quarrel with the Viet Cong.”
it’s the piss dribblers and shit squishers I curse.

I am the Gandhi of the fast food world
refusing to eat the food I make,
feeding instead on vegetables and tofu.
the other workers call me Pig Pen, not Gandhi
a name I wear proudly as I stand waist deep
in green garbage dumpsters with my friends the rats and cockroaches
for two days I am in Hamburger Heaven working the windows instead of the toilets
until the secret is out I can’t make change and won’t make small talk
with squeaky clean men and women in mini- vans
from the good side of town
then just as sudden as a snowstorm sweeping off Lake Erie
the manager, a graduate of Hamburger College,
grits his little mustard colored rat teeth
in the supreme irony he commits hamburger homicide
that lazy day in the summer of my youth
glaring at me with a half-smile, he says
“ Runfola, You can’t cut the mustard.You’re fired”

I realize it was a Kevorkian mercy killing as I grow older
my chains were cut from the hamburger plantation
where older American’s who can’t make it on Social Security
and discarded factory workers whose plant moved to Mexico
have the opportunity in this land of opportunity
to start over making minimum wage
the only condition of employment
wearing jackshit clown hats and checking your dignity at the door.
on payday every other Friday
the embarrassed old men hand their check over to disbelieving wives
the displaced factory workers from Chevy
cash their check at the gin mill across the street
and fight with workers just as desperate
but
how do you punch General Motors in the mouth?