XXXI

I never “work”

At my “job”

nobody does

I know a yuppie on unemployment checks

who hangs in exclusive tennis clubs

And takes tequila for him and his friends

“this ones on Obama”

I know a bum who gets food stamp cards

All over this spaghetti plate of states

He sells those EBTs for 500 bucks

And drinks his wine under the bridge

the only “work”

is bullshitting yourself

with those patrons, citizens who appear,

at your “desk” or whatever,

to offer a curt greeting, avoiding your gaze like poverty

and slit their wrists to reveal

a different color blood,

that gushes out in glass rivers,

northern tides that flood the basement

where I “work”

daily, hourly

the flood leaves citizens obliviously soggy,

standing in circles like eggs in northern nests—dainty dainty, trim trim,

tucked in the highest crag of someone’s tush—where its always raining

Down below in the basement where I “work”

I’m presenting such a fist, such a fist as they’ve never seen

A fist of namelessness and minimum wage—of course,

I’m an idiot and my name is bitch

I drool on my “desk” where I “work”

Here and there, I go outside and smoke

Then I go back inside

A guy with a pitted faced billows, vanishing into an elevator

Two dripping ladies trundle, dressed in white—inevitably sweaty

A silent patron wanders lost in the parking lot with his keys

I have a fantastic headache and dream of dirt

A duchess from NYC pokes fun at me

I’m not supposed to wear nail polish at work either

I’ll keep drowning in fake blue blood and growing up,

the world at large will fist my poem in its butt,

while the I that I wish I’d forever be

will smoke outside

watching a pudgy man, who is also smoking,

sprint across evening Boston

huffing in his business clothes,

running from his mother’s tongues