Job Interview

Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch's wife

          He would have written sonnets all his life?

                         DON JUAN, III, 63-4

"Where do you see yourself five years from now?"

the eldest male member (or is "male member"

a redundancy?) of the committee

asked me. "Not here," I thought. A good thing I

speak fluent Fog. I craved that job like some

unappeasable, taunting woman.

What did Byron's friend Hobhouse say after

the wedding? "I felt as if I had buried

a friend." Each day I had that job I felt

the slack leash at my throat and thought what was

its other trick. Better to scorn the job than ask

what I had ever seen in it or think

what pious muck I'd ladled over

the committee. If they believed me, they

deserved me. As luck would have it, the job

lasted me almost but not quite five years.

Anonymous submission.