Tag: work poetry

Two Poems by Joli Huelskamp

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Tech Support

He should have retired years ago,
this pale old man at his laptop.
I’m here to help as I always am
when he forgets his password.

Glory days framed on his walls,
awards and photos, a brilliant engineer,
impressive on the masthead,
shaking hands with the governor.

He should have retired years ago.
Is he an old dog stuck on routine?
Has he no golf buddies to hang with?
No hobbies? No grandchildren? No sunny patio?

Password reset done; he thanks me.
And I must move on to my next call.
Zachary in Accounting
just got the Blue Screen of Death.

*

Loose Cannon

He doesn’t buy Girl Scout Cookies
or popcorn or oranges or raffle tickets.
A framed photo of a jet ski
has pride of place on his desk.

He lunches with the custodians,
wears baggy pants and misshapen tees.
A hula dancer and palm tree grace the faded tie
he wears at mandatory conferences.

Management can’t peg him.
Transferred, demoted, reassigned,
asks the hard questions in meetings,
states facts they’d rather not hear.

Consultants in custom suits
correct the misspellings on his report,
dress it in their logoed presentation folder
and charge us 50K.

Can I help? he asks me,
the newbie with more zits than savvy.
Solves the problem, shows me how,
and won’t take any credit.

Too bad he’s such a loose cannon,
he could really be somebody here,
they cluck, diving deeply
into the synergy of their paradigm.

*

Joli Huelskamp lives in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Bewildering Stories, The Bluebird Word, and Brilliant Flash Fiction.

Book Launch: Human Resources by Erin Murphy

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Book Launch: Human Resources by Erin Murphy

ONE ART is hosting the launch of Erin Murphy’s new poetry collection— Human Resources.  

~ When & Where ~

We hope you’ll join us on Wednesday, June 18, at 7pm Eastern.

The book launch will be held on Zoom.

~ Event Description ~

Poetry reading by Erin Murphy & special guests to launch Human Resources, documentary poems about labor & employment (Grayson Books, June 2025). Sponsored by ONE ART. Pre-order from your preferred bookseller or here.

~ Special Guests ~

Marc Harshman, Brian Turner, Kwoya Fagin Maples, Le Hinton, Ginny Connors, Mark Danowsky

~ Registration ~

The book launch will be held via Zoom.

Register here.

~ Need more info? ~

Reach out to Mark Danowsky at oneartpoetry@gmail.com

~ What to support ONE ART? ~

Here are ways you can donate to ONE ART.

~ About Erin Murphy ~

Erin Murphy is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, most recently Human Resources, Fluent in Blue, Taxonomies, Assisted Living, and a forthcoming collection of lyric essays. Her areas of interest include poetry, creative nonfiction, demi-sonnets (a 7-line form she invented), docupoetics, prose poetry, class, labor & employment, medical humanities, the writing process, and humor. Her edited anthologies are Creating Nonfiction and Bodies of Truth: Personal Narratives on Illness, Disability, and Medicine, both of which won Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards, and Making Poems. Her work has appeared in Ecotone, The Georgia Review, Women’s Studies Quarterly, The Best of Brevity, Best Microfiction 2024, The Writer’s Almanac, and anthologies from Random House, Bloomsbury, Bedford/St. Martin’s, and other university and independent presses. Her awards include the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, the Rattle Poetry Prize Readers’ Choice Award, the Foley Poetry Award, and The Normal School Poetry Prize. She is Professor of English at Penn State Altoona, where she has received the Athleen J. Stere Teaching Award, the Grace D. Long Faculty Excellence Award, the university-wide Alumni Award for Excellence in Teaching, and Penn State’s inaugural BTAA Mellon Academic Leadership Fellowship.