The job was boxes. Boxes came in at six in the morning.
Pick up box, move box, set box down,
dissect box with a boxcutter, dull-edged scalpel
encased in green plastic, slung at my hip
like a revolver in a cowboy movie, or else
a ceremonial knife, gilded dagger. I’d offer
the wood and plastic entrails to the gods passing by with shopping carts.
The gods didn’t want them, gods said no-- sacrifice unaccepted--
and they had to be buried in the back, with other
Unacceptable things. I slept there sometimes,
sore back to cardboard, when no one was looking, though
I blended in well with the backstock.
And sometimes I emerged from pale sleep
surrounded by pillows, towels,
bowls spilling suicidally from the shelves
onto the concrete floor. The boxcutter was still at my hip. A warning.
Stainless steel doors and iron rafters hung to the side
and above; metal computer towers around exhaled
from their glowing white bellies, while the very wry phantoms that wrote
notes to my soul in fine stationery dissolved like fog,
and I remembered that I was sad, and broke,
though I could still taste their dissolution
like smatterings of sugar on my dry hard palate.
It was only an aftertaste, but I enjoyed it much the same.