Krista Creel, 12/5/2016

Current Occupation: Raising kids, happily away from the corporate grind 
Former Occupation: Communications Manager
Contact Information: Krista Creel earned her graduate degree in journalism and undergraduate in creative writing from the University of Memphis. She has been published by the Universities of Pennsylvania, Chicago, Arkansas and Memphis, as well as other independent literary magazines. She moved her family into the wilds of rural Tennessee to pursue a more authentic way of living in the South – one comprised of back porch swings, hand-me-down chickens, plum trees and open pastures.

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Office Politics

 

I’m not religious

But at the office I pray

Because I have a lot of time on my hands

And plenty to be guilty about

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A Cramped Office

 

Seeping sentimental

On a lush rainy day

Watching

From this cramped office

The bugs crawl into crevices

To keep dry, unlike the daisy

That bends and loves it.

Until the rain stops

And the white wing sings

From the third story brick office

And the space is still.

 

For a few moments

We can breathe again

And tuck in our shirts.

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Corporate Mentor

 

She exaggerates herself

since it is that she fears

she’ll be taken too lightly

or too unawares,

and the boys

all so sprightly

and dim

will not follow

or bow

to their knees

with their jeans

torn up from their bending

at her crown

and her gown,

that she glimpses in mirrors

as she checks her cheeks

(lined hard and precisely)

for rouge.

 

And her bust

(neither roundly

nor high)

is outlined

defined

so very poorly

with tight sweaters

that she wears

for attention

and denial

for she swears

she was once a size six.

 

Then she speaks like the thunder,

on the verge of a scream

on the verge of obscene

and she cackles at will

at nothing as funny as a light bulb gone bad

or a dream for that matter

since it is that, you know,

these dreams that we have

are so terribly sad

and dim.

 

And of course there’s no fault

in herself that she has

that’s so easy to tame as her hair,   

or forget with a beer

or two.

No fault at all.

(Can’t you tell by the way

that she holds her hips

and the way that she sips

her drink

and

her fingers how slim and together they are?)

There’s no fault, not at all

but for so much in others

not so polished

nor so privileged

nor as lovely as she.