How to write a poem while the boss is in the office
calling out high pitched demands from her desk:
nervously, with one eye on the phone, one ear cocked to her office door.
Toe tapping to sounds of construction outside the open window, coffee running through internal synapses crescendo-ing with fire engine.
Whiz of saw, honk of large trucks, wheeze of traffic.

Stop to send an email, track down a phone number.

Thoughts shorting out, intermittent static, blocked radio wave signal turning number blip seeking control with no frequency low frequency how frequently do I write something down on a Post-it: enough to compile a poem? A story? A novel?

Tolstoy said it would take him 15 days to finish writing Anna Karenina. It took him four years.

How to write a poem with the boss in the office:
make a few notes, then write yourself a Post-it
FINISH THIS LATER.

The man who works in Human Resources
wears shirts buttoned tightly to the neck.

At our administrative meetings he spends twenty minutes reviewing the Dress Code.

He lurks daily outside our office, waiting for the elevator.
HR is on the 6th floor: what’s he doing on ours?

The man from HR has the face of a clean-shaven ferret.

In grade school he was called tattletale.
No one liked him then, either.

In bookstores he fights the urge to read over people’s shoulders.

He spends most nights alone at the kitchen window.
He lives on a quiet street.
His butter knives are lined up neatly in a drawer.
Sometimes he counts them.
There are exactly 24.
There were 25 when he bought them, and he frets about the one
gone missing.

The girl who had this job before me moved to Rome with her Italian boyfriend. Everyone keeps telling me I have big shoes to fill. I wonder what size she wore and whether they were Prada or Payless knock-offs. I wear a 7 ½ or 8, depending. Which is about average, I think.