the fossil record
#2
INSURANCE CO. 1963
pecking at electric maws.
But for potty trips,
we don’t move till 10 a.m.
File into lunch room
File by coffee stand
Pick your spot from
every yesterday.
I like Rose a lot.
50 & hefted onto pointy shoe stilts,
her auburn helmet rides in place.
Rose laughs & types & swears,
Fag sticking to the purple corner of
Her Joan Crawford mouth:
“I work to pay his alimony for wife #1.”
Then we have Wilma from Wilmore,
where a Methodist seminary
forms and informs all.
No hint of paint on this one.
Jackie from Harlan County—
She’s gone feral here in the city.
Hickeys collide on the thick
peachy stem of her head.
Indeed delicious with rubyfruit
lips, broom of lashes, sheaf of sable hair.
I know why men want her.
At 12:15, lunch.
45 minutes exact.
File into lunch room
Pick your clique
Bite and backbite,
The fodder of our day.
Jewel is a master typer
Views our drudgery as art
here on the cabbage farm
Big red field paws.
Monster turn of ankle.
She & her twin were once
divas on country radio.
At 2, we take another
orchestrated break.
At 5:15, we quit.
Carol, newly hitched,
fills us in on sex,
a huge lip sagging
to funnel her drool.
In the Bluegrass, early 60s,
only neckin’ & pettin’ allowed.
Only tramps go
all the way.
You don’t let a black girl
type here either.
The day one came to apply,
the place buzzed & hissed.
Skirts go north on Greta’s avenue.
You can see the fork. With
beehive tower (early Marge Simpson),
a definite full-blown chick
The underwriters are all men.
Carrie has ‘em dribbling.
Rural homecoming queen,
Big-boobed, puny legs, biting eyes.
She will not age well.
==============
One day sliced into
Our narcotic time:
November 22.
I had to leave then.
Can’t think liability anymore,
except ours, his:
Man on a counter
at Parkland Hospital,
Priest sweating over him.
And the wife who tried to
retrieve his brains
from the back limo corner.
=================
Next day, our college
football team played on.
On Monday I did too.
Back to the cabbage patch.
To funny Rose & zany Jewel,
To trashy Carol & wimpy Wilma,
To deductible indemnify
loss waiver backspace
Indent CAPS Lock
Shift Period. Return.*
——Joyce E. Latham
*in acknowledgment of labor poet Chris Llewellyn (author, Fragments from the Fire)