PAPER PRISONER |
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I would rather have clean building air, but they tell me, "be satisfied with your executive blue chair." "With its six inch padded seat how deep you'll sink and never want to leave this trendy room." Mauve decor can't hide the fact it's still a cell and I am a paper prisoner with paper clip chains,terminally down, tame as the african violet on my desk, blooming under unnatural light. Here, managers pace the halls smiling their polyester smiles. Noontime, I flee to the mall. A prisoner to the yard. I do not plan an escape--to hop the lite-rail or tunnel the paperwork. I only want exercise. I am not hungry like this man on the cathedral steps, wearing three dirty shirts smelling of urine and last nights Thunderbird. I wear silk, expensive perfume, and weak regret. I am overweight, live for the next state holiday-- have never seriously considered parole. Turn my head, drop a dollar in his palm as he God blesses me, and I redeem my soul. |
| "Paper Prisoner" copyright 1993 by Jennifer J. Pickering. All rights reserved."Paper Prisoner" won 1st Prize in the First Annual Civil Service Poetry Contest of the "Suttertown News" in October of 1993. |
