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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
OFFICE PARTY: DISTAFF VIEW, by KAREN SWENSON Poet's Biography
First Line: My mind is in the deep freeze
Last Line: Stylized beyond reality.
Subject(s): Facades; Marriage; Office Employees; Appearances; Weddings; Husbands; Wives; Clerks
First Line: My mind is in the deep freeze
Last Line: Stylized beyond reality.
Subject(s): Facades; Marriage; Office Employees; Appearances; Weddings; Husbands; Wives; Clerks
My mind is in the deep freeze
wrapped in airtight plastic,
and who would want my thoughts
even glossed by hollandaise?
I have left my face with the baby-sitter
and come here sketched in eyebrow pencil,
hesitant as a dress in basting stitches,
to stand beside my husband - my name tag -
and watch the shrimp pass by, boiled commas
nodding at the edge of a crystal bowl.
The accountant's wife splutters freckles between
the pink-bowed lattice of her open-backed gown.
Ambition, a pulled tendon, aches through conversations.
And I, trying to make jelly-glass gestures into Dresden,
am an extra, an appendix, my function organized out.
Take me home, husband, and we'll make
love on the oriental rug, laying
a little ontology on another pattern
stylized beyond reality.
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WHITE, WHITE COLLARS by DENIS JOHNSON
A DEATH AT THE OFFICE by TED KOOSER
THIRTY BOB A WEEK by JOHN DAVIDSON
THE CLERKS by EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON
THE CLERK by SCUDDER MIDDLETON
IN RE ALFRED EMERY CATHIE by CHRISTOPHER DARLINGTON MORLEY