TEAM PLAYER
by Michael Kriesel

Each spring, all the employees
(mostly women in their fifties)
sign a softball at a special
meeting, followed by a potluck.
Bob said the manager asked him
to sign the ball too, even though
technically he's not a J.C. Penney
employee. Maintenance is sub-
contracted to the lowest bidder.

DUNG
by Will Inman

we are a nation
of keepers
kept
and machine operators
i am one of the kept

among the kept are poultry
pigs
and people
among the kept are tracts of land-fields
waterways
mountains of dung
killing what we meant to grow on

some keepers are kept in some ways
and some kept are keepers in other ways
and nearly all are machine operators
whether it's a pencil sharpener or a derrick

it takes mountains of dung makers to make war
as we keep and kill each other

BOXES AND ENVELOPES
by John Bennett

There are those who push the envelope. They're called postal employees, anachronisms in a digital, circuitry world. They earn good money for unskilled labor and their days are numbered. Some of them steal plain-wrapped packages from their carrier pouches because they know there will be drugs or porn inside. At home alone they wash down the pharmaceuticals with beer and stick the tape in the VCR. They are a below-the-radar element in America's multi-faceted sub-culture.

Others lose it big-time and shoot up the post office, killing fellow workers and paying customers without partiality; these become honorary members of Andy Warhol's Fifteen Minutes of Fame Club. Andy Warhol may have been the only true Twentieth-Century prophet.

The box thing is more complicated. There are boxes inside boxes and a lot of people swearing on a stack of Bibles that they are outside of them all. There is an ongoing debate about whether it is better to be in a big box or a small one.

Some people feel more boxed in than others, and when the claustrophobia gets bad enough, they meld with the envelope pushers and go around shooting down innocent bystanders; although there's no such thing, really, as an innocent bystander. We all play our part.

This entire Confederation of Dunces constitutes an element of society that provides a smoke screen for the real players in the high-stakes game of doling out misery. Those directly responsible for war and starvation are high rollers with a non-negotiable bottom line. Besides the Confederacy of Dunces, they use religion and sire cute little families to deflect attention from their true agenda; they are psychopathic corporate giants.

***

The odds of this sweeping scenario ever changing for the better are slim, but here are a few off-the-cuff tips on how to stem the bleeding:

Anything claiming to be the opposition isn't.

If you have an urge to put your shoulder to the wheel, stop to consider who invented it.

The best bet is to forget boxes, envelopes, wheels and fire. An impossible order, I know, but just considering it is a beginning.

Are you ready?

On your mark.

Get set.

Go.