he cast discriminating glances
when he wrote it and said it out
loud it made him laugh
he uttered Thats preposterous
Is it he countered Youll rememberIm sure the brouhaha
you made of that sustained glance at college housing
I do
Brouhaha You fought it
I did However not on the grounds that I didnt think
the thing existedI knew what they were getting at you had to be thick if you couldnt follow their
reasoningridiculous as they may have been to try and qualify it My objection . .
. .
Youre vehement objection
I wasnt that bad
Think Recall the room Recall that management had the chairs up set in
it in a ring so everyone could see everyone
else not the usual rows of chairs descending
from the lectern from where they addressed you
I dont have to recall Youre me
Then you know you were vehement
I was exercised I . .
. . You exercised the hell out of that management team
They were being obtusethe setup
was outlandish Sign a legallybinding jobthreatening
document that you would notwould
not what was it . .
.
. Participate
Yes Participate Asif it was a group thingparticipation
But you understood what they were
getting atthe underlying undergirding And yet you admit in writing saying
aloud youre able to cast a discriminating glance
I had a discriminating glance
then
You did yet despite thatat the risk of losing your job you fought them on their premise of a sustained glance
We fought it because management wanted employees to sign
and attest that we knew exactly what it was despite them offering no definition
in the text A sustained glance And they insisted theyd know it when they saw
it Purely subjective Utterly inane And they could fire an employee for it if accused or if management witnessed the act of a sustained glanceChrist
Not many men were employed You were the only man in the officethe others
were groundsmen or physical plant maintenance men The majority employed were women They signed
it quickly Without a chirp
The men signed it too without a
chirp
You chirped
I signed it
You signed it because they said if
you didnt that was grounds to fire you
What did they . .
.
. Now youre the funny guy They called it
insubordination Ive never been not to that countrythat nation
Funny So you signed it and beneath your signature in
big block letters you printed UNDER
DURESS
Yes That was inspired I dont remember
where that came from do you
Do we I dont Though we were inspired
We were fuming
We were fuming
I wish I knew or remembered where
it came from It was like a burning
bullet point
It was like a fucking Burning Bush
commandment
Christ it was It was illuminating
And they said You can’t submit
that. You can’t write that you’re under duress.
They threatened my job Thats duress
Brilliant
Yes Though we cant take credit for it
No We must have read it somewhere
Yathink
he laughed
and he laughed
and they laughed together
mirthfully
a discriminating glance
it was a practised glancehed been
practicing it since he was a young boy glancing up over the top of his science fiction novel as he walked
his glances acquired and distilled
more information than when he looked hard at something or at something for a
long time
looking hard bored his eye
and often
a singular aspect one detail in his field of vision attracted his eyedominated
it and languishing on it he despysed everything else
the distillate a flash point
coalesced and screamed and streamed its cognitive information across his
nervous muscular and skeletal systems and when it began to subside he glanced again took another pic
some people have a remarkable
sense of smellsense of tastehearing some
were sensual mages adepts adroit habile savants
he had to trip through a thicket of nouns and adjectives-fashioned-into-nouns
to recall savant
senses practised
senses honed
