It was me and Big Angie and George at the bar
and the subject was prison food.
I had to tell them
my hot dog day story,
how we looked through the plexi-glass
and saw what looked like two hot dogs on the lunch plates
and how the message filtered back through the line
of this miracle of two hot dogs
because they only ever gave us one hot dog
and nothing changed in there
and if it did it never changed for the better.
But what we found when we got our trays
was that they had
cut the damn hot dogs in half.
Big Angie told us about some mysterious meat
they piled onto the plates each Monday
and called Red Death.
George was very quiet.
Nervous, only a week on the outs.
Just to get him going
I ask if the pizza inside
is still square.
Square just like everything else,
he said,
and flinched when I reached for a pretzel.