M.P. Powers

The Smallest Brewery in Germany      

I have just bought 
a large brown 
beer from the smallest brewery in Germany
and am now sitting at one 
of their outside tables
across from a currywurst 
trailer. 

I get out my sketchbook. 
I get out a pencil. 
I scribble an outline 
of the two old ladies sitting to the left of me. 

They are eating sausages, 
fat ones, 
dipping them lengthwise into little sunlit pools 
of mustard. 
Dipping and chewing and talking with their mouths full. 

I start in on their hairdos, but my view is suddenly
obscured by an old man on a bicycle. 
He squeezes his airhorn to announce his arrival, 
takes off his helmet, 
starts chaining his bicycle to the pole.
Then he picks up his phone
and talks to someone. 
This lasts for quite some time, 
and when he is finished, the two old ladies 
are getting up to leave. 

I look around for someone else to draw. 
Four dour, deranged, alcoholic faces – a parody 
of Mt. Rushmore –
leer at me 
from the table against the wall.
A middle-aged waitress floats by. 
An elderly man appears in the doorway of the little brewery. 
He is wearing khaki trousers that are soaked 
about the crotch 
and down the insides of both legs. 
He has pissed himself, 
it would appear.
But it’s nothing that seems to matter.
He carries his beer toward 
the currywurst trailer
sits at a little table over there.

Next to the trailer, on a little plastic chair, 
the proprietor is sitting,
his belly resting on his lap like a medicine ball
someone has placed there.
He looks exhausted. 
He looks like he’s eaten too much of his product, 
all those sausages 
roiling around in his guts. 

I dig my eraser from my backpack, 
get rid of the old ladies,
and start where the sunlight licks the side 
of the proprietor’s fleshy
jowl. Then I get in that massive maw, 
the two little outspread legs. 

I am almost finished 
with the outline when 
this beautiful young woman
(the first shot of beauty and youth I’ve seen all afternoon)
rouses him from his plastic
chair. He stands up, lumbers lugubriously 
into his trailer which sinks a little
when he steps into it. 

He then deals her a sausage, 
a large, pale one.
And now others come, more customers,
one after another, 
a long line of Germans
anxious to be fed and I’m left 
there with my partly finished 
outline and my dark 
brown beer. 
I take a sip and forget 
about the drawing.

I write this poem instead.