Office at Night

 

image: Edward Hopper's painting "Office at Night," 1940

It's 1940, and Pearl Harbor
has yet to wake Americans up
to historical catastrophe. City lights
illuminate her, voluptuous in blue
but ignored by the pale manager
droning out his own letter, which
she typed perfectly. It's Friday,
after five. Her desk is cleared,

she's ready to slam the black
steel drawer on another week
and meet the gals for a drink,
go home, kick her black heels
off, free her body from fashion
unclip the hose and roll them
off, strip the rest, and
sink nude into hot suds.

She stares down her olive
drab boss, whose wife's holding
his dinner at home and wobbling
under a headache. The office
is running out of air.

hans ostrom 2022

At Lake Polyester

I was fly-casting aspersions

into the fetid waters

of Lake Polyester when

a squad of bankers

bum-rushed me

and knocked me about.

“Stay off our land, drifter,”

they said. I let them say

it twice more, for practice,

and then said, “This isn’t

your land, and I’m not

a drifter.” They said Oh

and ran fast to find

legal counsel. Several

women studying their

own voluptuousness

waved to me from

across the lake. Sunlight

on their curves and

globes became a

sermon, and I believed.


hans ostrom 2013