ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Meg Yardley lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she is a school-based social worker. Her writing has recently appeared or is forthcoming in publications including Rogue Agent, SWWIM, Bodega Magazine, District Lit, and the Women's Review of Books.
On Hold at the Unemployment Office
What I wait for (as a sly saxophone
traces and retraces the same arc, as a cramp
knots up the right side of my neck)
is numbers; the sound of my own voice
growing quieter; the buzzing mosquitos
of shame. What I wait for is heavy,
bland, tumorous, a gunny sack full
of dusty potatoes. Too heavy for verbs.
For this I’ll wait faithfully,
longer than I’d be willing to wait
for the fresh scent of eucalyptus in the hills.
For this I’ll ride all the way up and all the way down,
down and up, stomach lurching
through every floor. I’ll hold down hours
in my seat. I’ll press my ear against
the slick piano strings, unplayed,
rolling me up in numbers.
At the time I first filed for unemployment in California, I had to call a state-wide phone number on the first day I was unemployed. (You couldn't call ahead of time, even if you knew you were getting laid off.) So calling on Monday morning meant calling at the same time as everyone else in the state, and waiting on hold for (literally) hours. As a social worker, I have learned a lot about how gatekeeping policies are based on judging people as deserving or undeserving. This is one reason why the experience of accessing benefits often involves arcane, time-consuming, and unnecessarily complicated rituals: help is deliberately made hard to access because we believe that (I/we/you/they) may not "deserve" it.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
