Shoshauna Shy
Shoshauna Shy
By Shoshauna Shy
This series of poems involves the finale of my 28-year administrative assistant career which ended in 2021 during the pandemic.
PANIC
They say we don’t remember
what others tell us as much as how
they make us feel
and so it’s a raw November wind
at a picnic table in this wooded park
where my office mates and I once
gathered in photo-ready outfits
for pizza on workdays.
My boss is seated there
waiting for me.
The wind is strong enough to blow
her black hair straight off her shoulders
hair at a length dictated by the pandemic
that has kept us out of hair salons.
Her black mask covers the scars
around her mouth that her dog left
when he bit her.
She says she is cutting my hours—
which means I will lose my health
insurance while my husband undergoes
a needed surgery, and if I retire, I’ll draw
a higher income from my pension.
Of course she doesn’t spell it out that way—
but the cold water splashing
down my windpipe does
OUSTED
A coworker tries
to help me weather
a forced transition
to retirement.
Remaining in the workplace,
she is estranged from her daughter,
has a son out-of-state,
and a husband lying captive
in Memory Care.
Mine is young enough to tour
Japanese gardens, lay flooring tile,
trim a honey locust.
Savor what you have
she pleads with me
while I yearn for the office
with its calendar pages
and klickitat keyboards,
the duties rotating
on their biweekly cycles.
Four clerical decades,
and no need that it end.
In my banishment,
I imagine the staff
lounging in the sunshine
of paid vacations,
feathering nest eggs
with the skimmed cream
of paychecks, gathering
at abundant potlucks
to discuss new projects,
new schemes.
Those days I played lighthouse
greeting their arrivals
frayed to bits by a long pandemic year;
I, gray-haired in my ankle hems,
blown away like dandelion fluff.
You have a husband, a brother,
your kids, your mother–the rest
is just bullshit!
my coworker claims.
And yet I have yet
to let that all go:
the lather-rinse-repeat
of working weekdays,
somewhere to show up and belong,
the chance to begin all over again
once a new Monday rolls around.
STUCK IN TRAFFIC
EN ROUTE AN INTERVIEW
FOR A JOB I DO NOT WANT
I’m a Tonka truck
on remote surging
in vain to cross
a threshold; roadkill
on the shoulder that
a crow pecks with
its beak; incoherent
garble between radio
stations; the pink fabric
in the other lane flattened
by oily tires; the fly
banging itself against
the windshield miles
from all it knows;
that bumper sticker
half shredded ahead
in which the only
remaining word is
FUCK
THREE YEARS INTO RETIREMENT
Like a boot heel meeting
the aid of a shoehorn, I renew
residency at the job from which
I was fired during the stay-at-home
lockdown because somewhere in
my subcortical region, denial surges
at 3 AM and I dream I am winging
up Glenway Hill to update the database
with donations, write a descriptive eval-
uation, arrange a board luncheon
with pecan pie because that clipboard
and calendar are still mine along with
the mail to open and sort.
I go incognito when my boss appears
sheathed in black rayon shiny as a crow
or I ghost-float away as the woman
who replaced me arrives to begin her day.
My coworkers don’t hiss What are you
doing here? but clutch me in relief
I’m back.
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