"Today At Work" by Daniel Scott Parker

 The windows in the office are brightand sarcastic as a college art major.I sit next to Carol, whose glasses are largeand occupy a great deal of her face, and whosays marin-ahd and bah-sil, even thoughshe is from Spokane. Today she is in another oneof her rich-white-lady-goes-to-Italykind of movie moods, which makes me think,coffee.I get some coffee and a bagel that resemblesa doughnut or a complex theory of time: like,this is you (pointing to the coffee), and this isthe universe (the doughnut, which is really an everything bagel).I am halfway to understanding relativity and the meta-physical nature of reduced-fat cream cheese when Melissa tells methey're installing a chakra on the seventh floorof the building, near the water jug.Everyone's antsy to touch it. For the sake of spiritual equality,I say why not just leave it in the elevator.Speaking of Italy, Raffaele stops by my desk and saysMost of the people who gives a shit / is shit people.I don't watch the cat videos / the fucking kittens and Christina Aguilera.Lately I've started making lists.For instance, I writeLetters to JulietUnder the Tuscan SunEat Pray Loveon the back of Misshapen Pregnancies,a self-published pamphlet bythe one they call Miss Rape is Rape,next to Melissa's carbonara recipe.Also, someone died. I thinkhis name was Ivan. Or Irwin.It happened at the Villa TerraceMuseum during a wedding. The topicof Irvan's death led to the topicsof morgues, jumpy corpses, and explainingto your mother exactly what tea-bagging is.Sometimes I make stuff up.Like the thing about Carol's fake accent.Or that I work in an office.I have never worked in an office.The point is there are things that arelarger than ourselves that we share.For instance, traffic.The water jug.The elevator.Responsibility.And so on.I used to believe in making points.Now I believe in making lists. Daniel Scott Parker was the 2010 Visiting Artist for the University of Georgia's Study Abroad Art Program in Cortona, Italy, and he holds an MA in Literature from Georgia State University. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in RealPoetik, Spork Press, Columbia Poetry Review, Marco Polo, and others. He lives in Chicago, where he is an MFA Poetry candidate atColumbia College Chicago.Photo credit Saad Mahamood