Poetry Explorer


Classic and Contemporary Poetry


OFFICE PARTY: DISTAFF VIEW by KAREN SWENSON

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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