“Places/Everyone (Brittingham Prize in Poetry)”

“This has one of my all-time favorite poems in it, “Short-Order Cook.”

Here: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/short-order-cook

I have this vivid memory. I’m in high school, and this poem pops up in an anthology. Everyone in my AP English Class was confused and hated this poem, but I loved it.

Also when we discovered I was the only person in the class who’d worked fast food. These two things are related.

I still love this poem, and Jim Daniels definitely is a working man’s poet. Nobody writes poems about factory work like he does. “