Poetry Saturday – Friday, 1:25 pm

It’s another “Poetry Saturday” already? I’m glad you guys are enjoying it. Thanks for the comments and emails.

This week’s poetry snippet is another one from my Inventory chapbook. It’s a “work” poem, a genre many poets love-hate doing. Hee hee. I seem to be alternating every other week, my stuff, the next week, other poets. Works for me.

Friday, 1:25 p.m.

Sherman sits across from me
eating green beans
with housin sauce
and golden squares
of tofu at a shiny
blond table in the
galleria and people are
milling and shopping
and rustling silvery
trendy-bags and getting
$5.00 shoeshine-sushi boat-
gift sets.

In the steady murmur
of public-voice lunchtime,
he imagines miscalculating
the inventory and writing
a lean, mean resignation letter
on stark white paper.

He will get laid off in January.

While his lips purse
business has built itself from
basement to skyscraper
and back again.

–Ren Adams, 2000, from Inventory.