George Bilgere's "Poetry Town": Poem of the Day, Feb 28,, 2025

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Here’s a poem for today, February 28, 2025

February 7

by David Lehman

It used to be Garibaldi’s, then it was Sardinia, now it’s Greek & it’s still the worst restaurant in the city, so naturally we go there instead of Suburbia at the Angelika, & Robert orders octopus, which is rank, while Lucie orders a Greek salad. “Ugh,” she says, because she usually likes feta cheese but this stuff tastes like goat cheese, which she hates. “But Lucie,” I say, “feta cheese is goat cheese.” She thinks I’m joking. “Let’s ask the waitress,” Robert says. We bet the tab on it. And when the waitress (name of Tricia) confers with her colleagues, comes back with the hot chocolate, and says, “The consensus is, we’re not sure,” I knew I had my poem of the day. __________ From The Daily Mirror: A Journal in Poetry, Scribner Poetry, 2000.

Why I Chose This Poem For this book, Lehman set himself the task of writing a poem each day for a year. In a poem like this one, it’s almost like he was waiting for the poem to find him. And it did, in the form of Tricia. Poets, we should give this a try. An aside: this poem, from 2000, could never happen today, thanks to the curse of the omnipresent smartphone.

Comments

[Angela Ball]

A wickedly funny poem. Great choice, George!