Eulogy for the American Diner

Let’s take a moment to grieve
The American Diner Special.
the coffee grinder,
roaster baker
chainsaw wielding mama’s boy
the workaholic storyteller
sourdough extremist 
sickly man in the woods
you don’t know this one
unless you know peaches and cinnamon sugar
and puff pastry with a fallen redwood tree.
But you know the American Diner Special.

You know blueberry cobbler, cannolis, Italian Grandmother, Jewish Grandmother, Southern Grandmother, any variety of grandmother works.
Space walks, moon landings, atomic bombs, hip hop, Ted Bundy, your local cannibal, fields of wheat, The Mythological Christopher Colombus, damp corporate marketing meetings that break into song, curly hair, satanic cults, pennies, the radio, acoustic sunrise on KFOG 104.5, or big bushy beards.
The American Diner Special works.

What doesn’t work is life after death
the golden arches you see are not heaven on earth
because heaven would never have a drive thru.
In the middle of nowhere, you stopped at the American Diner.
The special is a succulent biblically accurate angel, covered in mud,
brought out by the local Ethnically Ambiguous Grandmother.
But no. You are in the middlest, most moderate, most median, middle of the road, mean of everything.
There are no specials
at the American Drive Thru,
This Is What You Ordered.

— Ari Nystrom-Rice