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Impressions of a Workweek
by Lacy D PhillipsImpressions of a Workweek
My return to the den of bullhorn voices
is marked by the incoming call tone
which I have pegged as a clean c sharp.
I imagine this verse in a minor key
at a tempo that matches the second hand,
cruel in its precision.
The broad women of the front office
are broadcasting their personal lives
in their own urban language.
I don't understand much of what is said,
but by the pitch, they're expounding
on the world's favorite pastime
the usual product of which is offspring.
I sketch my favorite of the twelve
for no other reason than I have a pen to put to use
and my brain has been numbed by inanity.
The scheduling clerk taps her excessively long acrylic nails
in sequence on her laminate desktop.
They are airbrushed with beach scenes
that she considers fine art.
This tapping habit is as close to the beach
and quiet contemplation as she gets.
The nurses hold their breath through the waiting room,
wading through air thick with communicable diseases
and the aura of odor that attends the homeless
and the hapless victims of poverty.
They wear brightly-colored scrub tops
patterned with trademarked cartoon characters.
The patients are not comforted.
I have passed this place once in the dead of night.
It looked something like a wedding cake under floodlights.
But you cannot trust your memory of the night here
where morning conversation revolves around last night's violence
rather than water coolers or coffee makers.
Poverty is ever-present, a crime perpetrated by society
consumed with preservation of structure, not life.
The white noise of the interstate is all-pervading
though dampened by particulate-thick air
that shrouds the flood basin and blue-distant Knobs
as if this place were dead already instead of dying.
Too hot to rain, the air is thick today.
I feel as if I could scoop it up in armfuls,
carrying it along to suffocate my ponderings.
The soupy sky hangs nearer my reach than ever
but contains nothing to pluck from its infinity.
It is monotone and simple as a clean slate,
an empty canvas so deceptively full.
Guilt for a dying planet keeps me sweating
as I decline air conditioned vehicles
in favor of downed windows and speed,
leaving the work week behind me
to decay in memory.09/09/2006 Author's Note: A distillation from the pieces written during the One Week Challenge in July of 2006. I was then employed as a temporary medical receptionist at a clinic in the West End of Louisville, KY.
Posted on 09/09/2006
Copyright © 2024 Lacy D Phillips
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