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.