mn :: poetry

Career Choices

Work on Wayne's project officially

ceased three days ago, although it had

been weeks since the programmers

had done anything but play poker. On Tuesday,

the day that lunch breaks

became tacitly permanent,

he deleted everything

and skipped the company disks

off the windowsill into the alley below.

Then he read the WordPerfect 6.1 manual

from cover to cover, calling customer support

seventeen times while repo men took away

everything, kindly saving his computer for last.

Today he comes to work and even his desk is gone,

the entire office contains thirty-seven playing cards

one red pencil, a legal pad,

and a water cooler with nothing in it.

Wayne traces the marks that dividers

left in the carpet, then sits on the floor

and draws a picture of a clumsy dragonfly

on a pink flower: they seem to be struggling.

He plays solitaire for three hours, until his

large and nobly shaped head is full of cotton and

his right hand aches with carpal tunnel syndrome.

He uses his left to open the door and press the elevator button.

Outside, the cool air tastes freezerburnt.

Wayne turns south and puts one foot in front

of the other until he is on the corner, staring

at the brick and smoked glass drum

that capitol-domes the train station.

Wayne hefts his cashmere-wrapped stomach,

silently counting the coins in his pocket with one hand.

Not enough for a cup of tea -- ATM across the street.

The light changes, so Wayne crosses. A cool breeze

twists the ruff of black fur on top of his head.

The bank's spraycrete pillars blossom

into golf-tee shapes while a trumpet player

quietly thrusts his face through a Mingus solo.

Wayne reaches for his wallet,

stops with one hand on his right hip,

index finger pocketdipping --

steps back so widely as to swing a quarter circle to the right.

A bone man on a mulch-colored bicycle falls in front of him,

leaps up without pause, dragging the bike towards a bench.

"They gonna say I'm a tough motherfucker!" he tells Wayne.

"That motherfucker's tough!" He sits down hard and pushes

the clattering bicycle away. Wayne looks up into an audience

of flying pigeons, thinking in wonder

this building stands in relation to that as brother to brother

and brother to me

whom other people can look at the back of

right now, without mirrors

people walking behind me are looking at me

an obstacle no different

than pigeons that eat and shit

in the spaces

between

and I feel very small

very very small --

He changes his mind about tea and turns around.

A sound fingers his left ear, turns his head towards it,

and a small blue car in the process of stopping

strikes his calf. A yellow sports car scuttles

around them, thrusting forth middle fingers

like a bug's pincers. People shouting...

Wayne glances to the crosswalk sign and sees a red hand.

He is in the wrong. The woman in the car's chinless face

reshapes itself around a pair of deep grooves

between downslanting eyebrows. "Hey!" she says.

Deeply conscious of the air behind his back, Wayne

opens his mouth. "I'm a tough motherfucker too!"

he hears himself say, and, elbows locked,

he slams his big pale hands into the hood of the blue car.

Metal springs and poings with the sound and feel

of a large soda can, and the woman's eyebrows

reverse their directions. "Hey!" she says again,

but Wayne is running ponderously, leaping

high over the curb, gone in a mad flurry of pigeons.

Back in the office he considers calling WordPerfect again,

but the lines are disconnected and the telephones are gone.

Last modified: Oct 24, 2008 2:28 pm. Contact me.