Short enough to be interesting, long enough to cover the subject by Heather McHugh


 
 
Such were skirts in college. Or, at least, Picasso paintings. So I got a job.

The cubes were piled inside the cubicle, and cubicles composed

the office space. The structure had its hundred offices.

 

The orifices in their turns

were sundry and assorted,

many tiny. My own place

 

was by the book box. But the book box

was confusing. Empty, it had volume;

still a slender volume filled it

 

with das ungemesse. My talent was

for essences; my job was not of essence.

I was meant to weigh the syllables. How many

 

syllables in syllabus, what kind of Latin

doctors up a mind, so science could assess

the rarity, and rationeers could count the cost

 

and benefit. They ought

cost naught, I thought, given

the very burden of their heft, their surfeit

 

over heaven. Heaven had no words.

(But fucking O! It had a sword. Come not.)

I’ll never make the cut. The thought

 

of getting critical

immortality was more than a little

nauseating. Forget heroic hara kiri. All I wanted

 

was to handily resign my office. But, alas, it seemed

I’d oversigned. The ink was indistinguishable from

its premises and pretexts. What was that, desktop

 

or a door? The window or a wall?

The publishing or perishing?  Perhaps the whole

damn world was dark with one hand’s magic mark,

 

the limits of a liability. A circled article.

Was someone all this time

in error? Which damned way

 

was out? I danged it all, the danger

I could see ahead:  The boss in bed

with her minion, the mime

 

in the murderee’s mirror.