The secretary sits
eyes joined to the screen, she is
mesmerized by the redundancy of her own movements.
Fingers keep hapless time
on the keyboard
charting words along
an endless course
that never seems to lead to higher places.
A conduit -
a breathing piece of machinery
she is tuned sharply, spring-loaded,
ready to strike at each callous command.
Straight-backed and queenlike
the secretary sits
upon a paper-strewn throne
yielding nothing
but the passing of hours,
and dreams that unravel
before they begin.
DICTATION
He leans against her desk
with weight just brief enough
to sting her senses;
He does not see her
adjust the volume, tinker
with the sound of him
Sideswiping her field of vision
he chats with an up-and-coming colleague
of recent victories, of his own cleverness;
She clears her throat,
He does not hear her
adjust the rhythm, distort
the turgid words of him
He laughs out loud
So loud, she has to find her place
Again, she winds, rewinds
the words that fall like fetid droppings
from her fingertips;
He does not know her
Fingers can
in one sleek move
delete him
OLD PRO
Wiry hands, threaded thin, overexposed
She might have been taken for sultry once,
but she is tired now.
Hair tossed sadly, strands of it descend
on her uncombed heart,
the place where pins once stuck into slick lapels,
covering small miracles of panic.
Her résumé, a crumpled chronicle of references,
all dead or disinterested.
Fingers still flicker in brief, blind spasms
like hearts of bird, after the season of flight has ended.
She stopped getting hired
a few years back.
She hadn’t lost a trick,
only her footsteps faltered.
Holding out for another chance
to prove them wrong, she clings to pride
like life itself.
Her pension fund
of penitence.
