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Dinah's Pancake House

Half a century ago, Dinah's was built
Googie style with red Naugahyde booths

& space age lighting on Sepulveda near
Centinela, minutes from Hillside Memorial,

the Jewish cemetery, with crypts & graves
of George Jessel, Al Jolson, Milton Berle,

even, no relation, Dinah Shore. My sister
& I were at Dinah's Grand Opening gussied

in dainty coats & dresses. Mother wore a fur.
Our dad sometimes drove us for take-out

creamed spinach & fried chicken when he
was home from the Mojave or Kwajalein

or god-knows-where. Dinah's shows up
in 'Little Miss Sunshine,' when Alan Arkin

as Olive's grandpa rants at finding
Dinah's take-out on the dinner table

yet again. Driving the 405 south, you can
still spot Dinah's huge red & white

take-out bucket hoisted to the sky. German
pancakes, caramel malts, Greek omelets,

apple waffles. Fried chicken gizzards,
a specialty. Loyal diners, mostly older,

straggle in all day. My father-in-law Gene
—a grocery clerk—is buried at Hillside.

I like to think he's somewhere between
Jack Benny & Leonard Nimoy.

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Joan E. Bauer is the author of three full-length poetry collections, Fig Season (Turning Point, 2023), The Camera Artist (Turning Point, 2021), and The Almost Sound of Drowning (Main Street Rag, 2008). Recent work has appeared in Paterson Literary Review, Slipstream and Chiron Review. For some years, she was a teacher and counselor and now divides her time between Venice, CA and Pittsburgh, PA where she co-curates the Hemingway's Summer Poetry Series with Kristofer Collins.