Glimpse

Once heading toward a different exit,

I saw him striding down the platform

and cut off my voice in my throat.

Just as, when she was still well and at home

and I had a baby for her to meet,

certain plans would have taken me there.

He worked five blocks from me;

we rode the same morning train.

I’d stop him to talk another time.

Layoffs

This row of cubicles is haunted.

One by one or in clumps,

the occupants picked off, midday,

made to leave at once.

Now, their monitors staring and silent,

notebooks left in hopeful attitudes,

legacies of paper clips:

mine, all mine.

We Could Use a Few More Members at the Thousand-Dollar Level

Again they’ve left the mike on so the fitful

jangling phone is louder than the music.

How they must dread these ten endless days:

the manager schlepping her overnight bag;

volunteers drooping over their donuts; deejays

rambling, imagining our prolonged wince:

same recorded celebrity shuck, same coffee-mad

CD-dropping mania, willing to pledge back

almost anything for your call. But they persist

in the biennial slog with all too few

Jerry Lewis telethon moments. You will walk alone,

public radio station in the windowless basement

of a small-time college, sending out your pleas

to the profit-polluted autumn air.