"I was a waiter in a 24-hour restaurant when the first few poems of mine started showing up in..."

“I was a waiter in a 24-hour restaurant when the first few poems of mine started showing up in magazines. After the bars closed, people would stream in, drunk. Some of them I sort of knew. ‘Hey, it’s that guy! Why don’t you recite a poem for us while you get our cheeseburgers!’ At the bank once, when the teller at the window recognized my name: ‘I really love the part where your boyfriend dies and you’re really sad.’”

- Richard Siken, interviewed by Legacy Russell for BOMBlog (via bostonpoetryslam)