Ode to Pom Pom’s Teahouse
There is this place in Orlando where I went
almost every day the summer I slept in my Chevy.
They would refill my pot of tea until the leaves barely
remembered what it was they were supposed
to be breathing into the water.
This cute boy worked there- he had an undercut
and an upturned nose and always a grin, like he didn’t
know I had spent last night in the parking lot and would
do the same when the place finally closed tonight. Which
was late because it served the queer bar crowd, dancing
in from Parliament House and Pulse like they already knew
what would happen the next year. So that summer we all got
pretty good at pretending. I people watched and wrote
poems, mostly just snippets of conversation cobbled
together: it’s kind of like a mantra / and finally it was stuck
on my engine / the cadence of it / it’s kind of like a vitamin /
into your hands / into your hands…
And once I had a date, so I took her back home to the teahouse
and a stranger in a blue suit paid for our meal because (I suspect)
they had been stood up and wanted to kindness away the lonely.
Another time I was supposed to meet an old buddy but a
collision on the interstate stranded him for three hours and when
he finally got to Pom’s, Pom herself made a free Thanksgiving
sandwich for him because he must be hungry after all that
wreckage. Several of my friends started making salads and rent
there when nobody else in town would hire them.
I don’t know why I am telling you all of this. I just
can’t get it out of my memory- how the teapots
were chipped but they still held water the next June
when I went back after several months away. That was
after the gunshots. It seemed like the whole city was
fracturing, all our little apocalypses radiating out from the tragedy
like cracks across porcelain. That summer we all got pretty
good at loss. I ended up homeless again, briefly.
Pom’s was the natural mousehole. I think the cute boy
must have lost someone because his smile seemed to have
holes in it. People still spoke in poetry but they also talked less.
Or maybe we had all just gotten better at being honest.
almost every day the summer I slept in my Chevy.
They would refill my pot of tea until the leaves barely
remembered what it was they were supposed
to be breathing into the water.
This cute boy worked there- he had an undercut
and an upturned nose and always a grin, like he didn’t
know I had spent last night in the parking lot and would
do the same when the place finally closed tonight. Which
was late because it served the queer bar crowd, dancing
in from Parliament House and Pulse like they already knew
what would happen the next year. So that summer we all got
pretty good at pretending. I people watched and wrote
poems, mostly just snippets of conversation cobbled
together: it’s kind of like a mantra / and finally it was stuck
on my engine / the cadence of it / it’s kind of like a vitamin /
into your hands / into your hands…
And once I had a date, so I took her back home to the teahouse
and a stranger in a blue suit paid for our meal because (I suspect)
they had been stood up and wanted to kindness away the lonely.
Another time I was supposed to meet an old buddy but a
collision on the interstate stranded him for three hours and when
he finally got to Pom’s, Pom herself made a free Thanksgiving
sandwich for him because he must be hungry after all that
wreckage. Several of my friends started making salads and rent
there when nobody else in town would hire them.
I don’t know why I am telling you all of this. I just
can’t get it out of my memory- how the teapots
were chipped but they still held water the next June
when I went back after several months away. That was
after the gunshots. It seemed like the whole city was
fracturing, all our little apocalypses radiating out from the tragedy
like cracks across porcelain. That summer we all got pretty
good at loss. I ended up homeless again, briefly.
Pom’s was the natural mousehole. I think the cute boy
must have lost someone because his smile seemed to have
holes in it. People still spoke in poetry but they also talked less.
Or maybe we had all just gotten better at being honest.
TC Kody lives in Orlando. Their work has been published in Dream Pop, Voicemail Poems, Great Weather for Media, Rising Phoenix Review, The Literary Bohemian, The Beech Street Review, and others. They have performed at slams, open mics, dance parties, punk shows, art museums, streetcorners, and messy breakups all over the country. A Best of the Net Nominee, TC won the first Poetry Slam Incorporated Online Slam and is the uneditor of Rejected Lit. Yes, they would like a hug.
