Untitled poem in progress

The Target executive board

won’t have met me when

they make the decision to hire.

I will have sat in a room

answering a corporate survey that

some interviewer records.

I will be snippets of my own words

I will be scenario and outcome.

I will soon be wearing red?

[If I learned one thing

from rejecting opportunity

and slightly better-than-average love,

it’s that I am a commodity;

a widely distributed package waiting

to be shipped from the Warehouse

to somewhere dustier.]

I stare at that bloodshot eyed nametag

because my awkward jokes

and genuine optimism

are not welcome in this office.

This human interaction has become

painful and as algorithmic

as a Rubik’s cube—

Today I am not

in the mood for calculating.

I am more in a state

of dwelling on what has

and can never be undone.

because what brought me here

was not red or round

and what will take me back there

is not red or round.

I can never wear that suit.