Numbers Running.

• Author: Thomas, Truth
• Position: Poem

Numbers Running At the Brightwood McDonald's on Georgia Avenue and Peabody Street, Francisco hooks me up--two Sausage McMuffins instead of one, in lieu of my unfocused coinage--little more than a hundred pennies, mined from car seat wells. My wallet is limping today, and my gurgling stomach is a snitch. As calories in waiting cross plains of polished steel, pound meets pound in thanks, the echo of a hundred years of famished flesh possesses me--whether I want it to or not. Francisco's eyes become the eyes of Elizabeth Proctor Thomas who still hungers for Union soldiers who tore her house down to build Fort Stevens up--to put it back--to put her back together. She is thin, even for a ghost, and asks me for a piece of my muffin. I hook her up. When breakfast becomes a time lapse chew, her fingers extend from an indigo dress and become a hundred black children on Sunday morning taking seats beside us, just in from Emory United Methodist's race split pews. All of them ask for a piece of my meal and want to know who Lil Wayne is. I hook them up as their voices rise like streetcar lines that have suddenly appeared outside our doors. They tell me of the four room Military Road School for colored kids and Brightwood Elementary built for whites. I tell them we have a Black president now. None of them believe me. As they inhale my meal like feasts born of miracle fish and barley, they mention Abraham Posin, whose deli also...