The Ristorante di Memoria
has a zealot for a chef.

The waitlist is ten stories high.
The soup is a corridor to infancy, 

and because the smell of adored breasts
makes you want to die there, 

entrees are mandatory.
Waitstaff circle nervously

in felt-soled shoes, discern how diners
perceive the fullness of their glass. 

If you go, don’t fret about potential turns:
there is adequate supervision

and everyone’s safely masticating
antiquity in the same room.

When you are brave enough to order
the memory of your mother  

venturing miles from the nursing
home you placed her in, 

down a county highway into pasture
(her pajama bottoms soft with dew,

her face bloomed open),
someone else will be reliving

an orgasm so sepulchral
it was many beats before 

they could remember letters,
could fish their name out of the air.