revision

Period Ending

What I remember from the period

ending February sixteen nineteen

seventy-five would fit inside the o

near the end of Filippo’s with room to

spare for all the beer we drank on the sly

late nights on the kitchen crew with space left

over for seventeen dollars ninety-

eight cents, my net pay for the period

ending one cold gray winter day.   Seven

hours and thirty minutes at two sixty

five an hour comes out to one hundred and

sixty hours thirty minutes to spare

in a period ending aimless two

days after Valentines Day, a few weeks

into winter semester at Macomb

Community College where I studied

patterns in the acoustic ceiling tile

when I wasn’t reading Kurt Vonnegut

in the solitude of the library. 

Cat’s Cradle has gone brittle and yellow

as the pay stub that fluttered free last week

returned to announce one dollar sixteen

cents paid to FICA will be mine all mine

a few short years from now and once again

exhort me to Detach Retain, advice

I still find ambiguous sitting by

this window, dusk erasing my dog eared

Vonnegut in the period ending.