how many people do we talk to in a day?
is a question you could ask just like you could ask
why the new employee abruptly quit today and how
upon hearing this news you were overwhelmed with the inescapable question
is my job a scam? and I the victim? which if I were a comedian I would
run with as a bit but sadly I am a poet so instead I wondered
how many people do we talk to in a day? surely
a measure of more urgency than inverted yield curves
I'm no economist but my contribution to the field should be as such—
the stock market's performance is inversely related to how many people we talk to in
a day
stocks are high! friendship is low
of course I am wrong and
despair has been driving revenues since before despair invented the steam engine
in the economics of the future we will study
the effects of job security on the conditional probabilities
of gestures such as abruptly quitting one's job
I ask myself do my co-workers go home asking
how many people did I talk to today?
over and over I tell them
this carpet can be torn off the floor no problem it wasn’t made to stay
macroeconomic maxim #3
when interest rates cannot be lowered any further
the only way firms can stimulate consumer activity is by
telling their employees “the world is burning around us all we have is each other”
listen I’ve figured out why the new employee’s abrupt self-termination was so disturbing
the curtain peeled back on the most miraculous achievement of humankind
that people get up and go to work
by now you know the refrain
the markets open up and the weeks weaken
the weekends!
you see the poem started in the register of melancholy but
I am tired of the register of melancholy I am tired of the register of
guilt I am tired of any of you not being able to answer the question
how many people do we talk to in a day? I see it in
you you see it in me that we go home
Heartache Medication
and here I go again I’m
drinking one I’m drinking
two except it’s 3:00 in the
afternoon and no beer in Stalinist
Russia where they’ve also run out of
Modalert so suck it up
Green Gartside, medicinal citation cypher
cute chimney sweep turned saccharine
concern clerk
first the feet start to sweat
then your ass and image search
Jon Pardi sounds like his face
which is medicine for only 3:02
in yeehaw agenda but no cowboys
cattle driving me out the
parking lot adjacent to the causeway
which you’ve heard is the most expensive
road (was it in the
nation? the world?) superlatives
are slippery and trivia is only
fun when it’s like,
this road used to be underwater
it’s not right now obviously,
obviously the delta will fuck
us up soon enough, though. Will it be Davis or
Dixon which is just down the road
where Jon Pardi’s baby face
was a baby, actually
as obvious or inobvious as concrete
on its belly and pushed through mud
or as geometric fields of alfalfa or
the phrase ‘neotraditional country’
or how the office shakes when
the CFNR barrels by and in its wake
someone blasting Steely Dan “Peg,
it will come back to you" yet
it’s only 3:14!
and I am
getting paid.
Joni F-G
Joni F-G is a queer poet who lives in the Sacramento Valley. They work in an office for the University of California. Their poems have previously appeared on Paintbucket.page.