The Mysteries (fall 03)

Forty four hundred, but you can pay with plastic.
The steps of the process–do you have concerns?
Do you have any questions about the process?
Get the money off your mind Jack, or Ted
or whoever. Trust that our specialists
will get your signing bonus. Did you know
that they have them. Oh yes, they do.
But money comes, money goes: forget
about money anyway. The money you earn
is money gone. And when we talk career
we mean more than money, now don’t we?
Jack or whoever. Apologies for lapses
in this presentation. It’s the process
through which we walk you that counts.
We do so much business with guys like you.
You were looking for us, but you didn’t know it.

*

So I’m not sweating bullets he thought, his forehead
creased with nearly as many lines as he’d sketched
with red felt magic marker among the three circles
that intersected, to be his depiction of the process,
and in the darker space where the furrows met
(each circle had a title, but the titles weren’t clear)
was the client, was what he brought to the table,
red and cross-hatched, bleeding into the notepad
like a butcher’s heart wrapped up in wax paper,
a place where illegible terms were happily married.