Middle Management

2/18/22

And the cure for management? Once you’ve managed your anger, your time, your cubicle, ordered your thoughts in rows, releasing them only with neatly printed permission slips signed by a certified teacher, you’re left with a bunch of unruly employees who chant “resist, resist” over and again. Corridors fill with them, sporting berets and boots, just enough out of lock step not to remind us of the German goose getting cooked on the Strasse. But the resistance will be televised, with ads for electric cars, and you’ll buy into it as sure as you did your pet rock, yearning for the affection of its cool cheek. We weren’t yet at the stage when you had to feed the rock, rendered virtual so it went everywhere with you, squawking for meals in the most inconvenient places. The library carrel was one of those, where you went for the silence but heard the chitchat of students. One time you thought you heard the books talking down the rows to each other, crossing disciplines, but only when their call numbers conjoined. Here the birds make sound as sweet as silence, if you live inside it. Putting it in verb form feels like abuse. At its center a curling stone, inviting contact but fearing it, men with brooms guiding another stone in by warming the ice around it. The corridor they manage is cold, their eyes locked into the near distance. I saw a woman with a broad broom the other day, no handle. We saw Russian women with low brooms sweep the Moscow boulevards, backs bent as if in prayer. Put your broom in another context. From broom to bromeliad. Loud southern voices in the rain forest: “Putin’s not gonna tell anyone what he’ll do next. It’s war.” Their house is on the market for over 600 grand. Your new pieces seem to have a pattern, he says, setting up a theme and returning to it. It’s my thoughts on Lilith’s 60 foot leash; they run until they’re wrapped around a tree or fern, then bark at me for assistance. They can’t run away, but they can’t stand on their own two to four feet either. One poet hired a professional manager. My mother's care was managed by women who sat around a table as our kids played with brightly lit pipe cleaners.