Scot Siegel

WORK-FORCE

5. Nevada

A girl he once knew so reckless she'd walk on hot juniper coals and chew
Copenhagen without spitting: she'd tell him you know all poets are liars:
and he'd say prove it: and she'd punch him in the face: and he’d say that
punch felt real: but then she'd kick his bad knee: and he’d reel like a
drunkard: and she'd stuff him in the trunk of her Pinto: and drive him out
to the desert: and dump him at the border of a bomb-testing site--

4. Retribution

--Or was it the tailings of a defunct uranium mine: or a quarantined town
where they used to manufacture fertilizer: he don't remember anymore: he
must’ve blacked out when he hit his head on that rusty funicular: this is what
happens when you volunteer for an internship with the bureau of retribution
and your supervisor is the daughter of the secretary of exteriors: and she has
nothing better to do but harass the underlings: the ones who used to pull her
underwear down at recess.

3. Thong revealed between blouse and jeans

Here the suburban girls with freshly-minted real estate licenses pose as
ladies sipping skinny lattes in the city: they chirrup madly in the shape of
spring-loaded contractions: whereas the self-employed men sit mostly alone
in the midst of other men, especially then, and gravel over too-hot
Americanos with no room for cream––

2. Constitution

––Here they tap out futile elegies about rock climbing class five
rapids helicopter skiing and other wet dreams on their little black hand held
devices: while the wannabe ladies tee up the discussion with college savings
plans a little more red in your curlier hair and I don't care about mornings he
doesn’t look at me much anymore: and this is followed by a locust-like buzz a
swarm of hallelujahs, Ha-Ha-Ha’s that give all the solitary men deep
earaches that taste strangely like I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!®.

1. Preamble

Laws should not be called ordinances [incestuous cousins of bombs]; carnivorous flowers, maybe.

Scot Siegel lives in Oregon. His poetry appears recently in MiPOesias, OCHO, and High Desert Journal, among others. His second full-length book of poems, Thousands Flee California Wildflowers, is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry in early 2012.