Seeking someone who understands that opposites are often the same thing with different results.
APPLY BY MATTHEW DALEY 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 74
Position Available: seeking a candidate who understands
that opposites are often the same thing with different
results, who admires the idea of volume being a construct
of limited hindsight, who abhors windows and the way
they’ve taken over modern life, and who isn’t afraid to
weaponize the smell of coffee against the many and few
Positions Open: do you recognize the beauty in cups being
concomitantly half empty and half full? do you weather the
storm to converse about weather and storms? do you admire
overzealousness in others while doggedly pursuing a blank
slate demeanor? do you believe in the benefits of collective
responsibility until it is evidently not? You should apply.
Seeking: all candidates whose height ranges from 6’0’’-6’4’’,
possesses chromosomes of both the x and y variety, enjoys
sports as both metaphor and simile, can produce receipts for
everything because everything can be expensed, remembers
a time that did not exist, cannily apologizes only after board
and marketing approval, imbues interactions without binding
Help Wanted: we are a corporation but really a collection
of persons who personify an entity (as you will see we refer
to it as He or She to demonstrate our flexibility) who seek yet
one more person who blends in and stands out simultaneously
depending on who is walking through Him/Her at any given moment
and He/She is nothing if not for His/Her collection of moments
Second Wave Start Up: seeks an overzealous intern ready
and willing to triangulate all tasks with the efficiency of
a senior-level quadrangulator on a constant caffeine - or
any substance of choice that alleviates the need for sleep
or currency - escalation and who is determined to recalibrate
the word “union” to “no-uni” and determine its value elsewhere
Needed now: an assistant of personal proportions who will
remember everything I forget, retrace all my steps to cover
my tracks, act as a shield and deflector, take my abuse/process
it/return it as praise, dance with my whims, be every present
in personal space and completely absent in public, repeat back
to me the opposite of how I’m feeling about myself
MATTHEW DALEY
Poets can benefit from reading the things most people don’t. I think of directions, game instructions. acknowledgements, receipts, sides of cereal boxes. If you read them you can find a sliver of inspiration. Especially for poets. I approached this poem with that in mind, how employment ads conceal hidden truths. I’ve been fortunate enough to write in many forms and fields, but I return to poetry every day to look deeper within and further beyond. Some days I feel crazy enough to believe that I can find some distance in between.