Associate Editor Madeleine Wattenberg: I spent quite a while thinking about permanence and transience after reading NaBeela Washington’s “Burger King was once home.” I’m captivated by this prose poem’s anaphora, how each sentence beginning with “And” suggests a careful accumulation occurring in the speaker’s memory. At each level of poetic craft, Washington draws a stark contrast between her speaker’s deliberate reflections on home-making, on love, and other children’s frantic consumption in a fast-food restaurant. Yet this poem also shows that some quick moments—such as a gaze held, even briefly—possess a permanence that exists beyond the perimeters of time.
To hear NaBeela read her poem, click here:
Burger King was once home
And so the woman I loved more than anyone else at the time continued to ring up orders before passing a glance to me. And I felt a flutter inside myself as I stared back into her weary eyes—slits that revealed some hint of deprivation and perseverance for my sake—which were embroidered by patches of darkness and lines from experiences not always as sweet as our time together. And even as she tugged at the collared shirt clinging firmly to her skin during the fervor of the lunch rush, as beads of sweat gripped her hairnet in place, I felt her boundless devotion. And other kids, their throats raw with excitement, were screaming and skipping and carrying on, the indoor playground turned fort, echoes of their bodies sliding and climbing and piling, hysteria coating grimy tile with a trail of half-eaten fries and spilled soda and long-forgotten action figures. And I held her gaze and was grateful for the home she had built amidst broiled beef patties, plump sesame-seed buns, and the swell of grease, all so swiftly consumed by those just passing through.
An emerging Black poet, NaBeela Washington works toward her masters in creative writing at Southern New Hampshire University. She was invited to read her poetry by the Takoma Park Poetry Series and is published in Juke Joint and perhappened mag and is forthcoming in The Washington Writers’ Publishing House.
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