Poetry by Russell Zintel

                          ​Robert Couse-Baker CC



Dear, The Moment

Back to work after the world stopped
An old woman said this wasn’t the scariest thing she’d seen
This virus, in her lifetime
She said it was the atomic bombs in 1945
She said it was everyone hiding under desks
Not knowing if the world would split apart inside a tree that formed
For all those far away to see
And for its inhabitants, interrupted chimps, to never see
She was old, close to the most at risk
For the virus getting her, it was the scariest theoretically 
To her sort of person
Something far more violent and undiscerning lurked, too
Wearing no Ralph Lauren, only smoke and ash 
And the wind to which we all
Dwindle, rock and return 
A strong wind like no other but what arrives
Right before waking
A weather format dashed against false senses 
She ate the cold, second half of her medium rare burger
One or two fries and wasted the rest
Fries I threw out my shoulder cutting on the ancient hand crank
In the basement below our feet
A tomb for me and back-stocked paper goods
She looked down into her bill without a word
Signaling we were done talking
I walked back into the kitchen to begin
Again, my next era, soaked in grease
Later that evening, I received a text from a close friend
From way in the beginning of the back of things
His cat had wandered off into the woods and died
So you know I knew this beast
He wrote a thing about his dead cat, it was beautiful
Where does it go? He asked, referring to all frail ends
Across species
When we get lean
Closer to the last thing we’ll look like 
Before we’re nothing
The wind takes it, he concluded, some wind, anyway
The woman left the dining room, I heard her elope to closer
To her already close end, as I stood
Near the swinging doors, stirring
Forgotten chili 
Doing the small favor of letting 
A dash of blistering heat
Into our icebox, July, 2020





Shining Diner 

Feeling creative in a bad way, ever since I went off meds
Working the line less time than usual, still too much, still burnt out on coffee
Gotta try that yerba mate shit
It’s expensive, god damn 
Stoned behind the line until the summer day mixes with the grill heat
And both are gone, forgotten, a wormhole into the skin
There’s a camera in the kitchen 
Makes me want to eat a sloppy sausage and peppers
While glaring into it 
At that old toenail who didn’t wanna give me fifty more cents an hour
Though I know in my heart I shouldn’t
If I want to remain a wage earner at all, here
Sometimes I put ketchup on the plate, make a shape of it and think about blood
They can’t knock me for that, even if they’re watching
For what looks like plating technique
And contemplating the humblest of ingredients
That doesn’t mind being shed needlessly
Orders go up, many left to cold or proceeding past temperature
No one complains
Come on down to the diner
We close at 8
The blood on the walls is just ketchup
That comes from our dreams, the front of house staff
From the camera eyes, obsidian against
History’s ochre flow
The corners of the eighty-year-old ceilings
Let from previous ownership
Where does the ketchup come from?
We can’t explain it
We close at 8, stick around ‘til half past 
A ghost clocks me out at night
The same 
As if I were
To do it, myself


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Russell Zintel lives with his partner KT and lovely feline along the Hudson River, where they garden, cook a lot and try to live as well as possible. His work has appeared in Banango Street, decomP Magazine and Ash Tree Journal. He is ever at work on a full-length collection.
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