ISSUE 6

Claire Gunner 

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NDA

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You can’t write a poem about a law firm.
You can’t write a poem about how the recruiter
called you the week before the summer program started
to apologize that you would be the only woman.
How someone else asked at orientation whether the firm
would allow conscientious objections, and if so, how many.

You can’t write a poem about the conference room
with its wall of glass overlooking the river
on the twenty-fourth floor. You could feel it bend in the wind.
You can’t write a poem about the basket of stale M&Ms
and room-temperature seltzers, Diet Cokes, that you raid
and carry back to your desk across the elevator bank.

You can’t write a poem about the silver-haired partner
who came to the glass-room meeting once to explain
that the defense contractor was already doing everything it could
to remediate the contamination, the poisonous subsoil, how
the state had already ordered it, so this, now, was a cash grab
by heedless people, their prefab jobs and hobbies, their cancers.

You can’t write a poem about how you bought a leather jacket,
with an asymmetrical zipper, stand collar, sleeves slightly too long,
having more money than you knew what to do with,
fruit-of-the-poisonous-tree money, Diet-Coke-in-the-trash can money.
How appropriate, your supple leather jacket, to wear
the skin of an animal, a byproduct, incidental to the slaughter.

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