Manager likes to find ways
to entertain himself.
He’ll work the register too.
Just like us. He won’t
step in the freezer,
but will greet patrons
at the door. Manager
asks me to start wearing pants
without holes in our
quarterly meeting. The meeting
is held on the break room couch
with many upholstery holes.
I can look purposeful
like a weathervane.
Then he says, I know you don’t
want to be here, and Manager admits
he wanted to be an architect,
and even went to school for it,
but says this to the floor,
quietly, and so, like the floor,
I do not speak. The floor nods.
Manager went to the produce guy’s
metal concert once—he didn’t
seem to care for it, but he went.
I can respect that. Sometimes
I wish I could just go home,
is not something Manager says
because he doesn’t have to.
Manager doesn’t have to ask
if I too feel like a coat rack
nailed to the floor.
from Poetry Northwest 10.2 Winter & Spring 2016More by Keith Leonard from the library
Copyright © Keith Leonard
Used with the permission of the author
on behalf of Poetry Northwest.