Working Around the Policy

Issue 16

Employment agencies are looking for an experienced receptionist,
so I applied, bragging about being an expert of the art of taking things in 
 
In my email, I talked about riding out the shifts in everyone’s style,
the earthquakes in syntax, leaping from platform to platform to be social
 
As well as dealing with a carousel of faces at the top of the pyramid,
watching new power players on the rise, and the fall of the end of history
 
There was always an adjustment to these and more, lies coming
and going with latter-day revelations handled with a perfect little shrug
 
I told them if current events that are now called history were not enough,
and the switch from tape to bytes insufficient to prove my abilities
 
They could open the attachment down below, listing books I remember
processing and names of former lovers I cannot manage to forget

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Ben Nardolilli is a scrivener and a theoretical MFA candidate at Long Island University. His work has appeared in Perigee Magazine, Door Is a Jar, The Delmarva Review, Red Fez, The Oklahoma Review, Quail Bell Magazine, and Slab. Follow his publishing journey at mirrorsponge.blogspot.com.

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