Drew Pisarra, 12/15/2014

Current Occupation: Digital VP
Former Occupation: Book Clerk
Contact Information: Before shelving his contemporary dancetheatre career, Drew worked as a dry cleaning cashier, a hotel domestic, and a newspaper boy. Writing is a preoccupation.

 

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4 Limericks for the 8-hour Day

There once was a clerk from Kilkenny
who pinched every possible penny.
When asked his two cents,
on finance, he tensed
then mumbled, “Oh, I haven’t any.”

There once was a graphic designer
who favored black slacks and eye-liner.
Her décolletage
was contoured mirage
uplifted by stuffed three-ring binders.

There once was a Chief of IT.
His M.O. was Type A not B.
The kind of a guy
whose IQ was high
but scored low on camaraderie.

There once was an HR Director
who purchased an old lie detector.
In search of a laugh,
she tried it on staff
and ruined her new surge protector.

 

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Paean to the Paperclip

If Corporate America has karma
then reincarnation follows thereafter
and we’ll all return as office supplies:

some as staplers to double pin-prick
with hairbreadth metal
that traps in collapse;
 
some as brads to puncture
before unfolding robot wings
unseen below,

some as prong fasteners
reaching through pre-made holes
for their own metal straightjackets,

some as bulldog clips,
some as butterfly clamps,
some as ravenous hole punchers.

I myself hope to come back
as a paperclip
serene in its simplicity,

a single wire curled into two
steel tongues
like a CFO’s infinity

which, when bent out of shape,
still functions well enough
to unlock a pair of handcuffs.

 

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Memorandum

To: The Executive in Office 15-A

From: The Front Desk

Priority: High

Date: No as in Never

Re: LOVE

No one is belittling your search for love. No one is saying it’s easy. But over the past few months, it has become clear that we cannot help you. Our skillset does not extend this far. We are here to answer phones, type up correspondence, to file papers you’ll never look at again, to lick stamps. We’ll even fax should the need arise.

Additionally, we are willing to bring you coffee (black, one Splenda), to laugh at your jokes (briefly), to nod sympathetically (again briefly), and to act as a block for unwanted visitors/callers. We will go and have gone beyond our official job description. We think. That said…

We are NOT open to your casual touch, to your face getting so close we can smell a weird combination of baby aspirin and energy drink on your breath, to your gaze when it strays downward for more than one indiscreet second or to your second inquiry following our first emphatic no.
 
There are many fish in the sea but this fish will not be hooked no matter how many times you cast your line. Please cast in another pool. Please leer in another building. Please lean over another shoulder at another desk. In brief: Please stop.

Respectfully yours,

XX