Work

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When Jim, the maintenance man at the Boys & Girls Club,
told me his mom had died the day before, I stopped
spraying the baseboards and just stood there, deaf or dumb

depending on your perspective. No—depending
on his perspective. What could I say to this almost-friend
I see for forty minutes once a month, who mops floors

as I spray drain holes, who reads my poems
in the local paper but never mentions the homoerotic undertones
so we can still be men together, so we can still

talk about my wife’s job and his many absent girlfriends.
I wanted to say, Jim, you can’t hate the river
for eating its own banks, or, The abandoned church

has crumbled and needs to be cleared away, but I don’t know
what either of those statements mean except
that they mean nothing about his dead mother. So we stood there,

me holding my tank of chemicals and him holding his mop,
the holiest chains either of us has ever had.
We stood there for a second and in the second I thought

I heard galaxies imploding, shooting their cosmic ashes out
to feed other distant galaxies. The sun rose heavily
over the fast food restaurant across the street, as if

weighed down by the ocean hidden by our concrete skyline.
We watched as it tried to kiss the moon goodbye, watched
through the floor-to-ceiling windows Jim had just cleaned.

My cell phone rang and I ignored it, making my boss’ yawns wait.
He asked where his co-worker was and I told him
about my wife’s Halloween plans. Somewhere between

replacing empty toilet paper rolls and filling empty soap dispensers
I told him I was sorry for his loss and he nodded.
Outside, the day began its uncertain blur.