Three Poems About Job Interviews

Re: Resume 

Please note I’ve attached a phone number at the bottom of the page so you may reach 
me for an interview. I hope you can reach me. I have no area code. I’m just defending 
this area below my collar bone. I am building up my contacts like making any human 
connection is a contact sport please contact me please follow up please check to make 
sure my ribs rise and fall with my breaths and they quake into fault lines they shiver 
back into this familiar bedroom every time
Please hire me so I can claim experience and wealth please fire me so I can claim 
experience and wisdom
Please look at this resume so I can know I’m alive I’m alive I’m alive I was the 
last one to know but the first one to apply. I’m alive. Please consider me.

 

Three Poems – Beth May

DEEPEST SYMPATHIES

In Hallmark the other day,
Marching through aisles long-listed like a boy lost in a hedge maze
I tried to find a deepest sympathies card that rhymed,
Noticed how the cheerful cadence had so dutifully been adapted to fit 
Birthdays, anniversaries, congratulations cards, and even get well soons
And how the sentiment of vowels howling along with their gloopy-eyed readers
Would suit your humor well in this difficult time.
But there were none to be found. 

Just an assortment of macro-fonted cursive well wishes 
And plenty of blank space for me to add extra sharpie TLC 
But then knowing me 
I’d probably write about shoddy CPR,
Scribbling down some plagiarisms of my own inner monologue,
Like, “Can you tell your Dad to leave the gates of Heaven open for me
‘Cause I don’t think I can get in without some serious help. P.S. I’m sorry this poem Doesn’t rhyme.”

Blame Hallmark
They leave such empty space to ruin a perfectly acceptable card
With my innermost existential fears.
          Dear friend, 
          Have I bought the clothes I will die in?
                    Should I be celebrating my death day like I do my birthday?
                    Every day’s a party just in case. 
                         Will one of these cards be sent to my family when I die? 
My deepest sympathies if so goddamn it make sure it
Rhymes.


SOUTHPAW

In the ring 
You said I had the advantage.
Six months of sparring orthodox fighters 
Did you no good against my mirrored stance whenever I houdinied a right hook 
to your left temple.
Us,
Weaving in and out,
Real prizefighters.
You took your mouthguard out to ask me to marry you.
I felt cartilage shift under the foamy give of my left glove.
Stay down. Please stay down