Job Interview

It's raining small steel nails.

The taste gets on his tongue.

He wants to see himself, his suit,

His least-wrinkled tie, boots

As yellow as bananas ripe

For plucking. Up ahead an umbrella

expands: Renoir's ol' Boating Party.

The rain falls down his collar.

He wants to be a hammer pounding

Those nails of purpose, building love—

Or some entirely reasonable substitute.

He's done with counting birds on a limb,

He knows his spaceship's crashed.

On Jupiter, perhaps. No one's coming.

He'll have to get this job. Be somebody.

He enters the building, takes the elevator

As the email instructed.

In steel and glass, gravity arrives

At long last—away we go!

Up high above the river bridge,

Above attic dreams of youth,

Above the phases of the moon,

Above the broken heart, the roller

Coaster, those twenty mouths.

Up here, his eyes are empty

As the night she returned,

A butterfly bleeding in her palms.

He knew it then: the wheel breaks

When you break. Up up!

Awake in the natural order of things,

Awake and floating in milk, floating.

The interview is cancelled—last minute.

The guy who's after him is red

In the face, and his voice is a child's sketch

Of the sun. But something comes from nothing.

Red leaves his umbrella behind,

Renoir's ol' Boating Party. Magic.

The elevator sinks to the Earth.

He steps outside, opens Renoir.

Rain falls, silver nails.

He listens to it calculate

Upon the Party. He is lost,

Adrift in heaven. With no compass

Or map. Find me, he says to no one.

Find me.