Serving

you take your first job

and you’re on time the first day

and then you start to show up late

and your boss,

a bad man who’s going bald,

begins asking

why you’re always touching your face

and corners you

asking why your hands are always dry

when you leave the bathroom.

but after a few months

the coworker with the ass

has ridden in your car

and you’re relaxed

and smooth while taking orders.

the job has become second nature

and at the end of your shift

you begin taking boxes of beer

out the back.
because when you’re serving,
you're always a few pegs removed

from the bigger things,
the responsibility

the top

so it makes good sense 
to get fired

and get the hell out of there.

it’s not logical,

once you’ve been a server,

ever to be one again.

but if you're the type that's accustomed 

to pretending to wash your hands

and taking boxes of beer 

out the back, 
you'll find

it’s not exactly logical 
doing anything else 
either.

On Being Tiny

after a sleepless night of sin

i watched this fellow

named

neal degrasse tyson

break open the universe and lay it out square.

he wasn’t like the dapper and spectacled atom bombers

who shouldn’t even have been allowed to die,

or the big, genial, contemporary geniuses,

the Hawkings and Dawkins,

who write books.

nothing could be worse.

with neal it was simple. 
he said

the three most abundant elements in the universe

are the three most abundant elements in the human body.

they exist in the same proportions.

carbon, which is number three
can make more molecules and chemicals 
than all the other elements combined.

numbers two and one are

oxygen and hydrogen.

blah blah blah, but you have to know

where the elements come from. 
it's those giant melting pots: the stars.

as the commercials came on
i started thinking differently about space
and ever since
night has been distressing

not because we are so far away from everything else,

but because we are already everywhere.

this, neal said, 
should give us a sense of belonging.

well fuck me, i thought, and turned off the tv.

In the End

“What’s the end of the Old Testament?”

“What do you mean?”

The woman brought her leg up onto the couch. “I mean I haven’t read it.”

The man nodded seriously.

“I know the New Testament is all Jesus,” she said. “The Old Testament is Moses and Genesis. But what comes at the end of the Old Testament?"

The man’s eyes went up to the ceiling and sat still. The woman leaned forward, drank some wine, and then placed the glass back on a see-though coffee table. “I don’t know!” the man blurted out and they both laughed.

Then he talked about his upbringing as a Unitarian Universalist. It was a very liberal upbringing with a focus on social justice and tangible human values. He liked black people. He was totally comfortable with anything. And on and on. And then she said the same things back to him in a different way so he would see that he that wasn’t any smarter than her. There was lots of enthusiastic head nodding.

The woman thanked the man for dinner. They both said goodnight. The door closed and the man’s apartment became normal again. It was still too early to sleep. He tried to read. He poured a glass of wine. He wished he’d kissed her. But nothing matters.

Thank You

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