Deborah Hauser, 6/4/2012

Current Occupation: Claims representative at the insurance company where Wallace Stevens worked.

Former Occupation: Adjunct instructor at Stony Brook University and Suffolk County Community College.

Contact Information: Deborah Hauser is the author of Ennui: From the Diagnostic and Statistical Field Guide of Feminine Disorders (Finishing Line Press, 2011). She graduated from Stony Brook University with a Masters in English Literature. Her poetry has been published, or is forthcoming, in journals such as The Wallace Stevens Journal, dogwood, and DASH.

###
Thursday Afternoon in the Department of Risk Management

April rain spits at darkened office windows
while files multiply in stacks of bland manila
and sheaves of memos are continuously misfiled.
I write angry e-mails and then delete them.

I try to reach you on my lunch hour, the call goes straight to voice mail.
I apply data bytes and spreadsheets to natural disasters,
quantifying potential risk. You can minimize risk
and mitigate damages, but avoidance is not elimination. I wear

the keys to the safe deposit box and the Ladies’ Room
around my wrist on a coiled rubber bracelet.
I skip the self-defense class in the atrium.
The Pendaflex swing. At the bottom of my file

drawer is an emergency test kit. We agreed
we would be safe, but you were in the throes
of ambiguity while I took you
at the plain meaning of an ordinary word.