Natalie Chen

Matthew Muth
Engl 283
Poem 5
Peak Hour

Table for four. Right this way sir take a seat

Waitress! the check! I’ll be

Right back for you

Waitress! What’s your favorite? All delicious

Chicken pot pie? The best.
Sauteed greens? Heavenly.

Table for two.

We’re full.
You can’t be full.
Sir I’m sorry. So sorry.

Waitress! what’s taking so long

Pardon me
Are the crab cakes any good? The best.
The fettuccine? Heavenly.
Add two crab cakes.
Two more
crab
cakes

Waitress!
there’s a mistake here
Total of forty five sixty
We only had that much
Miss
Count it again
Forty five sixty
Can’t be right
Miss
No.

Waitress!
Yes Table for four
Table for four.
Explanatory Paragraphs:
When I started writing this poem, I intended to use the constraint of visible form to
portray the chaos of waiting tables. Throughout my first few drafts I stuck with the idea of
fragments of sentences everywhere and a lack of eloquence in general with missing apostrophes
and such. When I performed my first revision I chose to add something to the idea of chaos:
movement, because the primary duty of a waitress during peak hour is to move from table to
table. I created this movement by separating words and lines in a manner that causes the reader
to move his/her eyes across the page in a similar way. After the workshop, my peers gave me
many more ideas as to how I can further enhance the idea of movement by isolating certain
words and rearranging the form of some other stanzas.
The key parts of the poem that I’m playing on is movement across the page, especially
with the word “waitress”. In the first line, I space the words as to represent a movement across
the page analogous to taking a guest to their table. Throughout the poem, I isolate the word
“Waitress!” apart from the rest of the stanza to show the waitress’s position. Using the word
“Waitress!” as called out by a customer, I visually represent where the waitress is and throughout
the poem we see her zig-zagging across the page and up and down the page. Another bit of
visible form I used was the placement of the stanzas, I placed each stanza in a unique location
(besides the first and last lines) to represent the different tables at a restaurant and the different
conversations that are happening and the similar ones that begin with “Table for __” are all
placed in the same location on the page meant to show the entrance to a restaurant or where the
waitress greets the customers.
I also used repetition in this poem in the form of words and phrases like “The best” and
“Heavenly” in response to similar customer questions as I way of showing the repetitive and
almost cyclic nature of waiting tables. The waitress goes back and forth between tables, answers
similar questions, and also performs very similar routines, as shown in how I start and end the
poem with the same scenario.