Black Box

By Randall Mann

I was someone's

honor's student once,

a sticker, a star.

I aced Home Ec and Geometry;

I learned to stab a fork,

steer my mother's car.

Old enough to work,

I refreshed the salad bar

at Steak & Ale,

scarcity a line

I couldn't fail.

The summers between university,

interned at AT&T,

in the minority

outreach they called Inroads.

My boss, Vicki, had two

roommates, whom she

called, simply, The Gays,

crashing on her floor.

That was before

I was gay, I won't try to say

with a straight face.

Like anyone really cares,

I care. What I'm trying to say:

all this prepared

me for these squat blinking

office accessories.

The dry drinking

after the accidental reply-all.

By now there's a lot to lose.

Little by little, I have become

so careful, no talk

of politics, or orientation:

I let them say, he's “a homosexual,”

without an arch correction.

At a fondue buffet

in Zurich, our dumb-

founded senior group

director—when I let slip,

damn it, my trip

with a twenty-year-old—inquired,

They're always over seventeen,

right? I told her of course,

god yes, and, seething, smiled,

which I'm famous for.

I didn't want to scare

her. But I tell you,

I'm keeping score.

E-mail is no more

than a suicide

I'd like to please recall.

Note my suicide.

I'm paid to multitask,

scramble the life

out of fun:

Monday I will ask—

every dash a loaded gun,

every comma, a knife—

you to bury the black-box file.

Copyright Credit: Randall Mann, "Black Box" from jubilat. Copyright © 2014 by Randall Mann. Reprinted by permission of Randall Mann.