Too Many Bicentennial Pens
That summer after junior year Kathy and I had our first job
in a building full of mostly empty rooms. What is it about 17?
On the edge of adulthood, nearly there at last.
Here at least, we were equal to cheerleader Debbie
with her shiny Dorothy Hammill wedge cut
as we worked side by side. Now we were only voices
on the phone dulling her beauty’s brighter edge.
We met in the dark in the parking lot each morning
before 5 (to get cheaper telephone rates), our targets
the eastern states, were done by 8.
We grabbed phone books from the pile,
flopped in bean bags with our dial phones,
dialed businesses out of state—Dave’s Auto Glass
or Bob’s Barber Shop—and got the owner on the line.
If our pitch worked, we’d transfer them to the waiting salespeople,
always men, in the other room, preparing their bait.
The story was always the same: we’d had an overrun of pens
for a place with the same name and, lucky for them,
they could have those pens at a bargain rate, take them
off our hands, prevent waste—a nice bit of publicity, a gift.
It was the Bicentennial and at seventeen what did we know
of grift? We were heartless and loved to get a bite.
When our shift was over, we’d head to the beach to sleep it off,
dream of fireworks, dread the coming of the fall
when we would no longer be glamorous secretaries,
à la Mad Men, but back to class, once again
invisible in the halls.
*
Betsy Mars is a prize-winning poet, photographer, and an editor at Gyroscope Review. Her writing has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net. Betsy’s poems are widely available online and in print, most recently in ONE ART, Calul, Book of Matches, and the anthology Signed, Sealed, Delivered The Motown Poetry Review (Madville Press). Her photos have appeared in various journals, including Spank the Carp and Rattle. Betsy has had two chapbooks published, Alinea, and In the Muddle of the Night, co-authored with Alan Walowitz. Additionally, through her publishing venture (Kingly Street Press) she released two anthologies, Unsheathed: 24 Contemporary Poets Take Up the Knife and Floored. A full-length book, Rue Obscure, is forthcoming from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions.
