A Few Facts About Working

The music was typical Chinese inner
weather, but my heavy head made leaving
redundant. Nothing was right.
I had done all I could at my job.
Cloning is ethically ambiguous but this heat
tears me in half. I flee on Fridays
after tannic lunches, leaving memos
this side of perfection, like gin.
On the lowered horizon
a girl from Ohio tries to complete
a jigsaw puzzle. Don’t be afraid
to wear colors Shelley
my friend lectured. It was Sunday.
We sat on a ridge near Strawberry Fields
like inverted monuments, faded and green,
Nebraskans bragging that they could decode
our staged postures. Chinese leprechauns
in tight red suits jumped
up and down, out of sync
with hectored chanting. Already
wrecked we tried to get higher

than Fay Wray perched
on a building that we forget the name of.
The puzzle was a street scene
of Parisian stones and evil men
smoking. Wall Street must be dead:
the inmates are rollerblading through the sky.
A kid more perverted than Elvis runs
by, stops suddenly, and stares
up Shelley’s miniskirt. He looks
for ten minutes, as if she were a pop sickle
or rich relative of Jesus,
another exile in search of relief.
We think about writing home, guilty
about our moms, single women
composing new roles from one state
to another. Our last letters read: Beware,
the rebels have not been thwarted. Shelley
drags hard on the joint. Her hair
is whipped upward by a shocking wind.
The nearest dog, oddly enough, turns out
to be the color of a socket wrench.
Golden lovers couple in the wild grass.
I have not bathed in three days.

The posse for my soul will begin Monday
at eight AM. After noon
I’ll call Shelley, if I can remember,
and thank her. I should curtsy
everything. The uninvolved have been great.
I can live with weekend passes:
a blue uniform of rayon makes me
look less sad. It must remain creased.
Tuesday I’ll call off and explain harshly
there’s been too much overtime
flying around. Let the Orientals
have the fucking city. What can I do?
In a Soho bar I’ll spend the day
playing pinball, my import beers
slapping the low slung breasts
of my new-found best friends. Shelley
will stay at her desk in midtown
steadfastly refusing calls, the whir
of her computer becoming testosterone,
a virtual anti-hero to the other workers
dangling dizzily near her,
six feet under the ground.