In The Chinese Restaurant
Before the meal,
water and green tea are served.
Then house fried rice,
sweet and sour pork
are set on the table
to obtain fulfillment.
With the bill
a fortune cookie.
This is where it gets strange;
the cookie had no fortune.
Suddenly she was like a child
with a broken toy, crying.
With no sea winds
nothing fills the sails on her boat.
Lost on an ocean and no land in sight,
capsized she drowns.
She felt cheated;
indignant, she demands another.
Is one fortune better than another
if she has no fortune?
It's terrible when the child is
smarter than the parent.
The child inside wants to walk.
No matter how many times she falls
she pulls herself upright,
eager to try again.
Wanting difficulty when
the answer is before you
is closing the eyes
to wonder why you cannot see.
The bill is yet to be paid.
© RH.Peat — 3/4/99 — Rewrite 2/24/2008
Form: syllabic meter stanza patterns - Pindaric triad
3 parts - 7 stanzas - 20 lines
Published: England: Poetic Bond V Pg.102
Willowdown Books 2015
This is an untruth. The poem does not speak about the restaurant It speaks about what took place in the restaurant. It's about a rude person who refused to pay the bill because they didn't get a fortune inside their cookie.
With this poem you put the Chinese restaurant in one isolated corner. Come and visit The Netherlands to taste chinese food in Fine Eastern Cuisine. You must try that and I am eager to know which poem you will write. We never get Fortune cookies here.
RH, I know you from PoetFreak, you introduced yourself there to teach us poets in how to write poetry. I prefer poems straight from the heart
What poem doesn't come from the heart. That's part of any creative process. Get real.
You chose the menu that has been chosen by million others, sure. Its name is chinese restaurant, but is it true chines food?
And it was true Chinese food, But the lady didn't pay for it, and that was wrong in my opinion. Read the poem again. I think you're missing the point.
I personally do not like this menu, true delcious menu, true originak chinese mneu is entirely different
Sylvia, in my opinion if Chinese people make the food and call it Chinese food, that's what it is.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
Most white customers choose this menu, never another true delicious menu, perhaps no knowledge about which dish is true delicious.
You might be correct in you assumption but the cook was Chinese and the waitress was Chinese, and the lady who refused to pay them for what she bought and ate needed to go to jail. And the final word was that the Chinese owner call the police and had her removed for making a scene in his restaurant.