he entered the room as if rice was about to boil over,

seeing faces of those he didn’t recognise look as though

they were reading the last line of a book they never read

before, staggered, asymmetrically pensive in times during

coffee servings and bites from donuts, but, given that it

was only midday, the flavour of the waitresses grumbled

in overlapping office lunch hours. little did our hero, who

entered with arched cat-back whiteness, know, his un-

expected audience, delivering blank verse in motor-

cycle and side-car loads, were systematically only there

to make up the numbers, merely propping up the inward

burst of off the street heart attacks, the last hope of ever

thwarted reasoning and too the waitresses were cardboard.