The Secretary

a day in the life...

The Secretary

 

Her fingers dance across the keys,

Bony ballerinas, precision movements,

Stereotypically typing and filing,

Emailing, phoning, never once smiling.

 

Sipping her tea through lipstick thick,

The cup is drained with a woman's kiss,

Ringing her man on the office phone,

Hoping tonight that she won't be alone.

 

Lunch time comes, an hour of freedom,

She hates how quickly it always goes,

Back to the hell-hole, her boss is waiting,

With piles of cassettes he's been busy dictating.

 

The afternoon drags with the pace of a snail,

Painting her nails to speed on the clock,

Still two hours to go before the day ends,

When she hits the pub for "drinkies" with friends.

 

Angry client on line is dealt with with ease,

Denise is adept at asuaging old men,

Looks up at the clock and it shows five to five,

First smile of the day, she is feeling alive.

 

Leaves troubles behind as the office door slams,

It's Friday and she just loves the weekend,

With a spring in her step and the wind in her ear,

She is already tasting that first sip of beer...

Reviews

[Awdures]

This sounds so much like me...

I love that you have written out of the stereotypical male comfort zone! You've managed to encapsulate the life of a modern nine to five very well and kept a story flowing and the poetry rhythmic. I disagree with Annette, I don't think you need to review the rhyme, I think some aabb works well here to prove a point. The couplets are only there to stress the sense of fun in the last stanza.

Enjoyable and thoroughly readable work Dan.

[Annette Jay Sweeney]

Oh the imagery! You caught me with the first line. This is one of your strongest pieces I recall reading. I like all of the different aspects to her workweek we experience. While ending a poem with ellipsis isn't usually a good thing, I think it's just right here. In a couple places you could review the rhyme to make it flow better, but it works very well in general. I'd also suggest maybe starting lines in lower case where acceptable. You stop each line with an abrupt comma anyways, so the extra "sentence start" feeling given by capitalization may not be needed.

Keep it up! I particularly liked the line "She is already tasting that first sip of beer" (God, how I can relate), and the first few lines of the poem. The only image I wasn't quite satisfied with was the one of the afternoon dragging on like a snail. This is a well-known image, so maybe try to find something more unique to your style, like your "boney ballerinas"?

Great piece of work!

[Ruth]

"Bony ballerinas, precision movements,"....awesome imagery hon!
This portrays the very clash of life within a day! lol Awesome poem, a lot of lines I love within this one!
Excellent
xx

[bbb]

I still really like it. You just don't hear about them anymore, and some young folks don't even know what they are, sad.

[Dan]

Agreed on the cassettes thing - wrote this a while back - my mother used to work at a lawyers office and based it on a friend of hers

[bbb]

Something different than my usual reads. This is very interesting, I can visualize the whole thing, the events of her day. One question, do people actually still use cassettes for dictation?