Todd Pederson

Midnight at an All-Night Diner Beside the Sea
These Shorter Days of Science Fiction
Flatiron: On Market Sunday

Midnight at an All-Night Diner Beside the Sea

Faithless

or just the passage down a hardscrabble blacktop
road that needles south toward El Sauzal.

Mortal

or just a line of static from the AM dial; pointless
talk in a gravel lot; one last spin for grunge and disco.

Sanctum

or just a greasy spoon, one stone's throw from
the edge; ten mousy vinyl booths which seldom fill.

Regret

or just the need to pause and rest your eyes as Elvis
simmers chronic heartbreak from a grainy 45.

Absolution

or just a piece of foil to snuff your smoke; cool water
brought without condition or complaint.

Rapture

or just coffee with legs and a dot of cream, clean
forks, homemade lemon pie.

Redeemed

or just the sexy neon glow of yellow curd, bright
enough to read a Bible by.

These Shorter Days of Science Fiction

For Eric Neeno-Eckwall

Their voices upright on the knifepoint of autumn—students & their up-at-noon residence halls crowd loud stands of lit trees, whose brushwood— like candlesmoke—sketch back & forth skylines across the quad. Saturday, & a ration of shadow bangs against the lawn, its collapsing leaves the all-at-once vernacular I learn to speak. Pendulate, they turn like concluding pages to my Zelazny science fiction paperbacks, whose fantastic incident I know word-by-word, yet even now rehearse—the attractive spatter of seasonal unrest; a quick declaration off this best-of-what-may-be-left weather; & these spirited runabouts wearing the weekend's expression, hungry for lunch—flyaway constellations, their popsongs trailing through the long-armed circumference of my plum & orange afternoon.

Flatiron: On Market Sunday

Four blocks into broad daylight— near 5th & 23rd— where these lesser, historic charms square up to surround Flatiron & the Met Life tower, whose minute fingers take up a thousand cubic lbs. of air. Grid-by-grid, they argue with piety & passersby, sidetrack the bobwhite pigeons, gift-wrap each deliquescing streetlight until, from this containable distance, they are no longer measurements, but the last two keystrokes from my daughter's toy piano—a composition, a lift in pitch of one degree. Synchronous, unbroken, this orbit in its flats & sharps lays the August hours to rest, leaving only quadrants & me as someone else; ancient, grabbing my dirty travel-maps & guessing how the timing goes in glances back up Broadway at Madison Square—at those helpless fountains & green trees as long as offices; at a parkway splintered into vendors with their Sunday carrots & onions— every item shipshape, galaxies in their summer shirts, arranged to sell.

Midnight at an All-Night Diner Beside the Sea", first published by the What Light Poetry project on May 30, 2006 www.mnartists.org.

“These Shorter Days of Science Fiction", first published by the What Light poetry project on November 7, 2006 www.mnartists.org.

Flatiron: On Market Sunday, first published by the mnLit poetry project on October 10, 2009 www.mnartists.org.

Todd Pederson is pursuing an MFA degree at Hamline University. His recent work is featured in the mnLit What Light program www.mnartists.org, and What Light, an anthology that collects the work of 27 Minnesota poets. His criticism appears in online editions of the Rain Taxi Review of Books www.raintaxi.com/online. Todd lives in Eden Prairie, Minnesota with his wife and two children, whom he thanks for their patience and inspiration.