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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
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Inspired by Morgan Parker's Other People's Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night, recommended by Valerie Loveland. The inspiration comes from her title "On Children, How I Hate Them And Want To Corrupt Them, And How You Know I Hate Them, And What That Could Mean". Working With Children Inspired Me To Grow Up And Be Happier Than The Type Of People Who Work With ChildrenWhen i was too young to know
better I loved the people and hated the job Kids who tried to climb me out of their parents’ poverty And parents who paid me mistress money to keep their children out of their schedules There was never just one type of reason to quit Before the degree was a piece of paper It was a life sentence chosen at seventeen when i thought adults only despaired occasionally and that depression was chicken pox It was a teacher we’d nicknamed Princess Thundercloud who taught me to stare like amaretto sour My face part barometer part classified document that everyone suspected they knew the contents of but nobody had actual proof When Princess Thudercloud was pinned under a car And the ambulances arrived on time for her but late for retrieving her students’ now bloodied homework and the list of which children would be picked up by late parents and which would ride home on the bus Parents and teachers ignored the sirens around the but my coworker might be dead apologies And insisted there must be a better system to keep track of their kids And why weren’t we already implementing it? I’d like to think my mother loved me more than paperwork flying away from the broken glass of a woman she only spoke to on conference night But that she’d at least be decent enough to suffer a schedule glitch in a moment of silence for a misfortune bigger than having to leave work early to pick up a son who should've been sent home on the bus I gave up my career to pour coffee A beverage i don’t even drink Managed a wine store Another concoction of capitalism and beverages I had no taste for And quit that too I made a great server Happy at twenty percent but always striving for enough to retire I don’t miss the kids but i miss being the sort of person kids liked Now i push off the heads of strangers exhausted by sitting next to me on buses Never imagine a summer day no matter the heat of my impending future |
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