Jobs You've Never Had: The Retail Edition
The doctor
Jobs You've Never Had: The Retail Edition
1 - Your job didn’t involve being asked, “well, she’s about your size” by every paunch-waisted man who came into Victoria Secrets
2 - You never had to stock black plastic copies of movies in the adults only room of the video store that smelled like the kitty litter used in the stand-up ashtrays and something else you didn’t want to guess at.
3 - Were you ever asked, “Where’s your manager” even though your shirt says your name and manager but that doesn’t override your breasts, appearance of being 21 years old and working in the computer department.
4 - You were never not allowed to ask the woman how the shoes felt because you never had to know her husband was the one picking what his wife would wear; you never had to want to stroke her in-sole when he wasn’t watching because he never looked away.
also known as my best friend’s father
who caught fish and make the fish grow
through narrative; who taught me how
to blanch corn; who looked like Robert
Frost or Steve Martin or kindness;
who handed me a fried wonton dripping
with yellow mustard because it was the other
red sauce - he said - that was hot
so I should eat up; who laughed with me
as I tasted the heat; who was on call
the night my mother died.
Jessie Carty is the author of five poetry collections including the upcoming chapbook An Amateur Marriage (Finishing Line Press, 2012) which was a finalist for the 2011 Robert Watson Prize. She teaches in the First-Year Writing Program at UNC-Charlotte. You can find her editing Referential Magazine or blogging at http://jessiecarty.com
