Temp

Here’s how you never move from the studio

You hate, the job you hate; here’s how you go

From girl to old hag while never noticing:

You pack a suitcase full of brand new clothes

And lock it up and never open it again,

Leaving it out in full view near the bed

So you can see it every day and think

At any moment you could up and leave.

That’s how you never will. That’s how I stayed.

That’s what made the temp job tolerable

At first, even somehow appropriate,

And why I loved my fellow workers who,

Like me, were on their way to bigger things,

Time biders, heel coolers, until the break,

The call, the letter, as if the work itself—

So stupidly rote it made you want to drive

An ice pick through your skull—was proof enough

this wasn’t who they were or would become.

Like them, I had ambitions, even fancied

Myself an artist, except I had no art.

Oh, I drew on weekends, quilted, wrote

Down bits of conversation overheard

On corners or in subways, lines I saved

For the play or novel I’d be writing soon:

“My cure for isolation was divorce.”

“No one’s had a life like mine—not even me.”

Phrases I entertained my friends with when

Or they did anyway, coming and going,

Year in year out, and never growing older

While year by year too gradually to notice

I went from being a child like them at the

Beginning of a marvelous adventure

To older friend, to mother, to mother hen,

To “the eccentric” “the weirdo” “the hag” expiring

In a hidey hole in a nightmare forest

The children now are careful to avoid.

Whoever finds me, police or paramedic,

What will he make of this, my ancient suitcase

With its brass screws, its tiny keys looped round

The wooden handle, and inside it price tags

Tied to the buttonholes of shirts and blouses

Still in their plastic wraps, meticulously folded,

With little pins pinning the cuffs together,

Pinning the collar to the cardboard collar,

The slips and dresses decades out of fashion?

It’s like I’m hauling it from the train now,

The train cars steaming as I pull it across the platform,

And up the stairs against the downward tide

Of others hurrying off to other places,

And then I’m there in the vast terminal,

Under the giant clock, and nearly gliding

Over the marble floor I have all to myself,

The suitcase lighter than air, as I push out,

Breathless, through the doors to my destination.