The Sun
By Robert L. Penick
Out there, through the drive-thru window, past the Valvoline Instant Oil Change next door, with its line of vehicles hugging nose to tail across the lot, out past Dixie Highway with its thrum of traffic and pageant of litter and noise, there is a light no one else can see. It hangs above the tree line of the scraggly woods and above the curve where locomotives grind silver to a stalemate. You can feel the light, even while washing dishes in back or stocking the shelves in the freezer. Dragging garbage to the dumpster, you feel its heat on your shoulders. Even in autumn. Even at night.
Each day’s shift is equivalent and nearly interchangeable. Grease fogs its way into your clothes, your hair, your ear canals. Someone is always late; someone always wants your off day. One random family in a minivan will order six cheeseburgers, three chicken sandwiches, and one veggie wrap, each with its own special instructions. They will circle back around, claiming to have been shorted an order of french fries. Twenty minutes before the end of your shift, you will be asked to work over. Not every day. Usually the night before exams or class presentations. You never refuse, but you never forget about the light.
There are people here who, in ten years, will still be slapping burgers together. There are people here who will be in jail, or overdosed or, even worse, in management. They do not feel the urgency to move forward, to move past Netflix and drinking in the parking lot after closing the store. If you meet them again, they will still be seventeen or twenty years old. They do not evolve. But you have seen this light on the horizon, and you approach.
The poetry and prose of Robert L. Penick have appeared in well over 100 different literary journals, including The Hudson Review, North American Review, Plainsongs and Oxford Magazine. His latest chapbook is Exit, Stage Left, by Slipstream Press. The Art of Mercy: New and Selected Poems is forthcoming from Hohm Press, and more of his work can be found at theartofmercy.net