I Will Get To Wear Tights & Meeting Two Presidents
The lobby
wears red roses today
when I meet Caroline
from South Carolina.
Tomorrow Carolina’s Caroline will
toss plant pluckings on the floor
as flower girl for a wedding.
She tells me
I will get to wear tights
she tells me
there will be champagne!
Who told this kid to get excited about champagne?
Perhaps Harry or Dick?
Those lobby lions have
watched a centuries worth
of revelry
their manes are worn
by a century of child fingers
right now
Harry is getting stroked by Harry, search
Caroline’s little brother
whose shoulder droops
from wearing a plastic shopping bag
containing hot cocoa powder,
I tell them
there will be hot cocoa!
Caroline has decided
the other lion’s name
is not Dick as they say
but really it is Caroline.
This is a poem
in which I must mention
“international association of administration professionals”
(IAAP)
of which
Mary of Kansas
is division president
she does something
financial for work
but on the side
with the pickle
she has iaap
conferences
like this one
with seminars on juggling.
That topic peaks my interest
until I learn they mean
juggling as an expression
for responding to three bosses
rather than three burning tennis racquets
or three rusty nail studded baseball bats
or even three plush bean bags,
however, IAAP transformed
Bonnie of Texas
from a timid woman who
at the time she joined the association
stared at the floor enough
to tell me that there were
forty-two tiles between the elevator
and her desk at the oil and gas company
to the Bonnie who approaches strangers
with typewriters at hotels
to make conversation
about what it is like to be
Houson’s division president.
Both presidents
Bonnie and Mary share corporate gossip:
Google’s bosses must remind
the young workers
to wear shoes,
but pajamas in the office
Mary, President of Kansas on the left, Bonnie President of Texas on the right. In the background, a stranger.
are okay.