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Suite Suite
I. Chez Mon Eau
This restaurant, Chez Mon Eau, called
the temp agency, asked for an experienced
cook. Here I am. They're providing a
six hour shift, five days a week (any longer
and they'd have to pay for a second break
each day and I'd be considered full-time).
I punch a button on a microwave, mostly,
interspersed with complex programming of
same microwave. In three months they
might offer the job full-time, no longer through
the temp agency. Then I'd have a three-month
probationary period before getting benefits
such as health coverage. I mentioned I
had an interview for another job, something
fulltime. Temp assignment over.
Goodbye, Chez Mon Eau.
II. Honk
At the club where I work the lights
(part time), Darcelle XV, 74-year-young
drag queen who has been doing this
for thirty-eight years, tells the same
thirty jokes every show. One of the first
makes comment on our city motto
-- "Portland -- The city that works" -- which
she says mockingly for a laugh,
at which time I honk the light
three times fast. Now, every time
I'm sitting in Washington Park
and a truck goes by with that slogan
on both doors, my left hand constricts
three times.
III. Sex and Death
Feelings of mortality make me
creative (watch out, world, for
when I really am about to die),
and though what I create doesn't
usually reflect that, it's what
every poem, every story is about.
I must be feeling mortal today --
this, fifteen minutes after an orgasm.
IV. Suite
Blue Book UFO sightings in my home town,
1964, a year or two after Dad moved us there;
1968, I was nine; again in 1975 (is that the year
I experienced pavor nocturnis?), but no record
of them in 1979? I have no comment.
But I'm somewhat surprised. I've been waiting
for that ship ever since (1979). Here I am
on a stump in the park, waiting, and it's 2005.
I contemplate the mind's sweet flexibility.
* * * *
2/25/05
* * * *
Copyright 2005 by Greg Baysans
https://members.tripod.com/~poetx/poems/suite.html