TJ Desc
The Informed Workplace
The price was right and
we paid it honey, we went
to work with ourselves
in a car, in a curious
sort of mystery about the sandwich bag
that I took to school instead of the pink lunchbox
that wore its hair in pigtails
curving inward like a wedding bandcoconut and lime rising
in the stylist’s chair
for hours. Days later made up
lines deep creases below
her eyes: how much she’d give
for a face-lift!
She cries now her face becoming
a freshly weeded gardenwhere time swirls around the mouth of the nozzle
forgetting even the green that smells sweet—Conversation twisted like vines
and the simplest task of remembering
the color of oleander that lined the fence
was difficult for even her tenacious mindThe afterglow spread like pigment
“I’m frightened of the humor,” sighed the slumlord
as wonderbread filled the skies’ hearts
and we raced like wannabes toward tarnationIt wasn’t as if things weren’t put like they
should be, nor Darkness, nor a panorama
so birdfilled it was a garbled reckoning
that drove the sun onto this desk
we write from. Days spent studying
the sweat on a brow,
Howard the pedestrian and all the words set loose
and running towards the joyous floating fog of the hills.