How I Find Time to Write
Kyle Moreno
Today I steal it from my employer
who writes me up or maybe
fires me when he catches me writing
this poem on his time. I don’t
pay you for this, he says, holding it
up to my face, slapping it once
hard with the back of his hand for
emphasis, like a perfect rhyme.
I wince because I don’t like
perfect rhymes in my poems, and I parry
with this line about apocalyptic eschatology
which throws him off completely.
So now we’re arm wrestling on his desk,
pushing and squeezing and perspiring when
his secretary knocks on the doorjamb
and we both look up. She has
the loveliest breasts of all the secretaries.
She announces matter-of-factly that henceforth
she will be my secretary not his secretary
and that’s when I slam his arm down on his desk
which is my desk now with my poem on it
and my sweat and his blood and her breasts
in it and all the time in the world for it.