Editorial Assistant. Executive Assistant. Administrative Assistant. Writing
Center Director. Writing Teacher. Receptionist. Poetry Fellow. Technical
Writer. Barista. Waitress. Applying for three jobs a day doesn’t get me a
job. I get an offer from the diner and then the diner burns down. I flop an
interview at the local Subway. I make a couple hundred a month writing
blogs for hotels I cannot afford. I write a blog about Benjamin Franklin’s
Ghost House. It’s a chalk outline in the ground where his house was torn
down. I have a Ghost Life. My friends all get jobs. I know because they
each come to the bar with a polished eye around their neck. The eyes can
foresee only positive futures. In the future, my friends eat takeout and
rescue a dog. They have children they’ve made on purpose and call by
fashionable names. I try to look into their job-eyes, and the eyes close
their bulbous lids. The lids make a horrible smacking sound like someone
closing their mouth to go hmmmm—then not saying what everyone knows
they want to say. Was my phone voice too weak? Did my neck look too
brittle to hold a full-size job-eye? The lease is running out much faster
than my life is. Every day, my apartment gets one-cubic-inch smaller. The
walls get so short I only have room for the bed. I lie there and dream of
having any real job.
Copyright © 2024 by Nicole Connolly. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 1, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.
a found poem: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
I am doing nothing with my exile
of a life.
I go to the supermarket Saturday
on walks in the wilderness
of America on Sunday. I get thin.
I encourage the man I married
to work hard
at a career I don’t admire.
He is not sweet or funny.
He is as steady and strong as death.
I find myself horrified
of the future; the woman I want to be
is implausible. Voicing
my tender ideas is not possible.
The book of poems inside me
is desperate for morning.
Copyright © 2023 by Nazifa Islam. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 12, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.
I once saw Jazell Barbie Royale
Do Whitney Houston so well
I got upset with myself for sneaking
Past the cashier
After having been patted down. Security frisks you
For nothing. They don’t believe in trouble. They don’t
Imagine a gun or a blade, though
Sometimes they make you walk all the way back
To the car with the weed you didn’t tuck well.
No one’s at fault. That’s how they say it
Where I’m from. Everyone’s got a job.
I should have paid. Our women
Need to perform for the tips they couldn’t earn
After the state shut down for good reason
And too late. We lost so many friends.
My buddy Janir swears
He still can’t smell his lip balm. Our women need us
To call them beautiful
Because they are. They’ve done what they must
To prove it, and how often does any woman get
To hear the truth? Jazell is so pretty.
Whitney Houston is dead. No one wore a mask.
It wasn’t safe, so it wasn’t really free.
If you don’t watch me, I’ll get by you. I’ll take
What I’ve been missing. My mother says
That’s not how she raised me. I spent
A year and a half sure she’d die.
The women who lip sync for us could die.
People like to murder them,
And almost everyone else wonders
If they should be dead. Who got dressed looking
For safety today? Who got patted down? My mother
Says what we do is sin. But all we do
Is party. Even when I’m broke, I can
Entertain. You’re going to miss me some day.
You’re going to forget the words to your favorite song.
You’re going to miss me when I’m gone.
Copyright © 2021 by Jericho Brown. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 27, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.