Laughing Not At Jennifer

When I began ordering new books for this project, Jim Daniels's Punching Out was one of the first to arrive. I decided to flip it open and read a poem or two. In about an hour, I had finished it and ordered two more of his books.

I love a good work poem, and Punching Out is an entire book of good work poems.

In honor of that, I decided to write one of my own work poems, but I've already mined so much of my work in retail, and I've recently written a poem or two about my days delivering newspapers, and working with kids. But I'd completely neglected the first job I took when I moved back to Cape Cod after a single semester of college. So, here's that poem.

---

Sweeping Out
Adam Stone

My mother knows
all the wrong people
to help me find work

Before her real estate
agent promotes me to
manager of touristcentric
alcohol distribution
she sends me to
her coworker's husband's
penthouse office
above a bagel shop

She knows i hate
telemarketers Praise
the age of caller id
and answering machines
I just don't enjoy talking
to depressed avatars of products
nobody believes in
So she refers to it as a call center

My job is justified thusly
Tourists visit a resort
sign up for a free weekend
giving out their names
and phone numbers to a prick

The prick gives the numbers to us
We call everyone who enters
Everybody wins
A free weekend of listening to
people trying to sell you timeshare
four hours a day

Jennifer is my trainer
Forty-broken but with permanent
smile Excited that i am eighteen
and speak like an authorative
uncle

I get five confirmed appointments
before our dinner break
That's extraordinary she tells me
and maybe everybody I don't know

We eat dinner in the main office
Finally the real boss
My mother's coworker's spouse
royal wes himself over
to his desk to give us an inspirational
speech I don't remember
his five points of success
or his tips on how to be
promoted quickly or even
what would be considered
a promotion I only remember
how he swept his arms
across his desk
knocking over every piece of paper
before turning to jennifer
and telling her to pick it up

I remember how she smiled
as she picked up his deliberate
mess I remember the other middle
aged men and women gasping
How their bodies splashed back
to the walls or the knees behind them

I remember laughing Not at jennifer
but at this sad paunch of my mother's
coworkers eventually-to-be-exed spouse
I said goodbye to jennifer and someone
whose name i will never remember
and swept my arms across my own
cubicle Knocking all of my papers in
the trash And I took the trashbag with me
as i drove away forever