My Ideal Job

I work for the post office of the future, which has stopped
delivering mail and instead delivers lines of poetry
to people in between things, like children
who’ve already left home but have yet to join the circus.
I work in the back room, where the poetry is made,
a winding staircase of enormous size, on each step
of which there is a desk and a chair and a person.
Only some of us are poets. For every person
living the poetry of in between, there is only one
one hundredth of a person who can write
poetry. The others are people in need of paychecks,
doing their best. Some of them are people
in between, here temporarily to write poetry
to themselves. I want no part of any tribe / I want
only what comes to this body from the heart,
one of them wrote the other day. After they delivered it
to themselves, it fell from their hands.
I found it on the floor near the bathrooms
and gave it to Lester, also known as Interceptor 74,
who comes by my desk around three PM every day
to collect what I’ve done. He took it from me,
along with what I had written for the day – four lines
to a woman who has realized that life is a bigger
deal than she had been led to believe by her mother
(there is nothing so intrusive to the heart / as the blank
expression on your face / when you look
to the star-filled sky / and stare at nothing) –
and promised to deliver it a second time. He began
the long trek up the staircase; on his back, the large
sack of dirt where all the poetry we write is buried
for transport. The dirt usually leaks. We find
trails of it along the stairs, leading to and from spots
where poetry was. Sometimes, the trails lead right
to the edge of one of the steps on the staircase. When
one looks over that edge, either up or down, the world
seems to drive on forever, always nestled against the stairs.
I have asked where it goes once it reaches the darkness
at the top or bottom of the view. No one knows.
The in-betweens who work here are the only ones
who have a theory. They say that it connects
the first letter of God’s alphabet to the last. Some of them
are on their way up or down the stairs to find out.
The poetry they leave behind is quick witted and
insightful. It generously assumes the soul to be on fire.

Philip Jason’s stories can be found in Prairie Schooner, The Pinch, Mid-American Review, Ninth Letter, and J Journal; his poetry in Spillway, Lake Effect, Hawaii Pacific Review, Pallette, and Indianapolis Review. He is the author of the novel Window Eyes (Unsolicited Press, 2023). His first collection of poetry I Don’t Understand Why It’s Crazy to Hear the Beautiful Songs of Nonexistent Birds is forthcoming from Fernwood Press. For more, please visit philipjason.com