TWO POEMS

 

by Morgan Boyer

                           

                                                            

INTERVIEW

 

walk in and wave with a weird smile

as a woman you’ll never see again

welcomes you back to a blank-walled room

 

wait and remember to turn off your phone

as the blouse-bearing manager comes in,

ready with paperwork in her palms

 

lie about being fired from the call center,

claim to be good at customer service

and that you really care about the company’s “values”;

 

Reach back to bring up your volunteer experiences,

Try to fill in the blanks between awkward pauses

as the manager grips her pen and brings up the question:

 

Tell me about yourself

 

as if over 157,680,000 minutes could be smashed into a single sentence,

every car ride through the roads of McMurray before the dawn ever broke,

every doodle you drew, every raindrop watched, and Sunday sermon slept through

 

could be spilled to a stranger in a corporate prison interrogation

 

After giving them a list of what nonsense escaped your lips,

you walk out knowing full well they’ll forget to call you back,

Your feet fall outside the grounds of the office building

 

and back into the sun

​

​

NOVEMBER 26TH

​

The pumpkins were turning into pine trees,  

as your shopping-strained muscles tightened, your 

eyes a revolving door of open and shut,  

as your body slid off the discount mattress 

 

I never heard your last words, nor the exact 

second of the exact minute of the exact hour  

that all the oxygen fled from your lungs  

 

I do recall the emergency trip to Giant Eagle 

to buy a bouquet for your memorial, the sullen 

faces standing in Tiernan’s chili Tuesday line, 

dazed as I ignored the clinking and clanking of utensils 

 

Was that 75% off that 48” flatscreen TV really worth it? 

To tread through the capitalist warzone of weary workers 

breaking up fistfights over the new Barbie playhouse, 

only to be slain by your own brain into an empty grave  

 

It’s been almost a decade since then and I still hear your  

voice complaining about infected chicken, so-and-so’s  

Tumblr addiction, how your brother’s girlfriend wouldn’t shut 

up while you tried to study, how much you admired Dr. Boyle, 

and how your long-since deceased parents met at CMU  

 

It’s been over five years.   

 

Now the Sincerely Yogurt has been replaced by a vegan smoothie bar,  

the CVS with the coveted chocolate strawberry milk has moved, the library 

has finished its renovation, Tumblr is now an abandoned wasteland, 

but I still see your face when I see pumpkins turning into pine trees    

​

* * *

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Morgan Boyer is the author of The Serotonin Cradle (Finishing Line Press, 2018) and a graduate of Carlow University. Boyer has been featured in Kallisto Gaia Press, Thirty West Publishing House, Oyez Review, Pennsylvania English, and Voices from the Attic. Boyer is a neurodivergent bisexual woman who resides in Pittsburgh, PA.