Happy Monday, Gary! Gary is one of the interns stuck
to the giant strip of sticky tape hanging over the snacks.
Morning full-timer! he buzzes furiously with his one free arm,
revolving away like a sad piñata, Let me know where you need me!
Always a pleasure, Gary, but I’m hot-desking today,
which means I can take any open desk, anywhere.
This desk is bolted to a treadmill, and I get to catch
all of these falling motivational weights while I work.
This desk hangs half out of a top-story window,
to keep an eye on the competition.
This desk is in a vat of coffee — a soggy one, but productive.
This desk is a ping-pong ball with something alive inside it.
This desk is in a lion’s mouth.
This desk is made of something called wood, I think.
How to choose! There’s so much opportunity here!
Then I see it. Tucked in a corner, practically sizzling.
A desk designed to perfectly match my father’s,
smoldering with unfinished novels and seventy-five years
of undiagnosed magical thinking. They’ve even baked
his stay-at-home shame into the chair just right,
nicotine-yellow and padded with burnt job applications.
Here’s his electric typewriter with the E, V, O, and L keys missing.
The Mennin-green aftershave lighting puts the iron wool
of his beard right over my shoulder again,
half an inch above my next keystroke.
Such attention to detail! Management sure knows
how to show they care, to prove we’re part of the family.
Gary is weeping quietly again as the workday
comes to an end, and his feet begin to crisp and smoke.
So beautiful, he mutters to himself,
such beautiful, beautiful hot desks.

MAXWELL MINCKLER’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Atlanta Review, Ambit, Krax, Okay Donkey, The Interpreter’s House, Obsessed with Pipework, and others. He holds an MFA from Durham University UK, was honored to win Lafayette College’s MacKnight Black Poetry Prize, and placed second in the New Writers UK poetry contest.  Originally from Hawaii, Max lives, writes, and works on tech-ish things around England.