By now we should all be wearing
jet-propelled boots, doing business by telepathy.
The old Automat was a streamlined
vision gone hopelessly sepia,
as if the Philco were powered
by six gerbils on a treadmill,
or, say, the family car cruised thank to a Rube Goldberg confection
involving Murphy beds and mousetraps.
The cashier’s zinc scoop was full of quarters.
A brass dolphin’s head shone gold.
Three nickels and a quarter-turn forced an arc of hot
chocolate from fishy mouth into think mug.
Window-shopping for lunch, we heard
the click of an opening door, latch catching shut,
then the whirr of each turntable
as the surrogate dish locked into view.
Sometimes through the spent slot, behind glass cubbies,
a furtive hand recoiled after we nabbed the tapioca.
Somewhere in there, an earthbound kitchen.
Homely fodder, coconut custard and chicken pot pie,
but machine-delivered,
in the classic when-worlds-collide
lexicon of the late Late Fifties,
that instant just before we saw in coming.