Always on the Job

 

The state is never too busy to be your friend.

Only think of the mail carrier, strolling

briskly by, waving hello to the kids, and calling out

in a pleasant tenor voice, "Fifty Four Forty or Fight!"

All revolutions perfected this machine instead of

 

smashing it. The children smile and wave back, take

us back to the time when black and white

cotton mill workers were forbidden by law to look

out the same window. And the lawn may need mowing,

but it's Saturday morning and you feel that we've

 

reached a state of rest in the direct primary,

where the people themselves nominate party

candidates. Meanwhile, our friends in the

IRS are always willing to lend a hand. Why here's

one now, sitting on your living room couch, and his

 

button reads, "Remember the Maine!" As he sets

your youngest on his lap, a picture forms in

your mind: Andrew Carnegie walks with Woodrow Wilson.

Feels like it was only yesterday that women

couldn't vote. Now your youngest giggles and tells him,

 

"A recall allows voters to unseat corrupt officials."

He smiles with all the confidence of one through whom

the economically dominant class becomes politically

dominant as well, and he says, "Now then, let's

settle this little discrepancy, shall we?" Only think

 

of the FBI, of the postal inspectors who visited

the neighbors last week and--think of the mail, man--

arrested them for sending marijuana parcel post. We

might've heard some grumbles about the status

quo, and certain mumbled explanations about, you

 

know, referendums, which allow voters to repeal unwanted

legislation. But you couldn't tell for sure. The noise

your kids made saluting those feds, calling out, "Halt

the Hun!" and your own confusion--which state

used to require that black children's schoolbooks

 

be stored in warehouses separate from whites'?

--these things left you unsure, left you staring at

the lawn, until two agents, looking a lot like

Carnegie and Wilson, walked over from next door,

clapped you on the shoulder and answered, "Florida."

 

[This poem first appeared in Samizdat, Number 6, Fall 2000.]

 

Frank Rogaczewski