Cafe envy

#CafeEnvy // Every corner a strip mall. Every strip mall a pizza place. Dry cleaners. Chinese food. Maybe bagels. I long for a cafe, a coffeehouse, a place with soft chairs and low tables, where I can sit with a black coffee and write. A place with small tables outside overlooking the street. A place where artists hang their work. // Princeton has Small World and its strong biting coffee, best in the region by far. But I don’t want to drive the 7 miles into town and park; Thomas Sweet, the famed ice cream place, has a coffee house in Montgomery. I sat there this morning, having stopped on the way back from the doctor. Coffee. Turkey sausage, egg and cheese on a croissant. I wrote in my small black notebook, a poem about Glen Campbell, my mom, and Alzheimer’s. The coffee was good, not as strong as I usually like, and the sandwich was large and flavorful, but expensive. There are better cafes and worse, and yet I find myself envious of the patrons who came and went. // We have a diner, and another coming, and a great family restaurant. But no coffee house. No cafe, nothing like the small bistro in Paris Hemingway would frequent, where he’d sit and draft out stories long hand in a small notebook. Or that’s what I remember from A Moveable Feast. He drank rum while he wrote, I just want a place with coffee and wifi, soft chairs and breakfast. Someplace to sit and work. #instagramessay @newspoet41
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Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie.

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