♫ Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Make Me a Match ♫
 
It was almost the end of the shift,
someone on the Muzak above was playing 
a bebop version of Matchmaker, 
when one of the patients sauntered over.
Slouching in front of me, he hooked his thumbs 
into his belt loops, spread his legs apart 
and rocked back and forth copping 
a kind of wise guy, cowboy attitude. 
He said he wanted to leave, and he understood 
the best way to get outta Dodge was to get 
married, and then, he could leave tonight. 
I could call him a cab, but first, 
I had to find him a woman to marry.
 
He must have been sizing me up all night. 
I’d been hanging out in a nice comfy 
armchair, with a modern, cartoonish 
pattern of outsized flowers in a soothing, 
non-violent color scheme that went well
with the rest of the unit’s subtle decor.
The tune, piping down from the ceiling,
changed to something I couldn’t recognize, 
but I was still feeling pretty good: no woman 
in my life, music in my ears, and until then, 
a quiet night in the tilting house of the hare.
 
By now, he was looming over me,
intently waiting for my answer. All 
six foot six of him, and by his girth,
a good four hundred and fifty pounds––
maybe more. . . . Well, I said, as I stood up 
to my full five foot nine and a half inches, 
let me look into this. I’ve got to enquire 
to see who’s available. It might take a . . . 
moment or two, but I’ll get right back, 
and I sauntered out of reach whistling 
whatever tune was playing––maybe
Hit the Road, Jack with a fast alto sax 
squealing out like a tire or Fifty Ways 
to Leave Your Lover, something memorable 
for one man’s desire but not another’s.

Dear Bob, 

Today, I subbed at the hospital school,
babysitting class after class, 
teaching the kids nothing––the ones 
who live across the street 
in the group homes the hospital runs.

As you can see from the time clock,
ADP provides both you and me,
it took the allotted six point five hours 
before the kids and I gathered up 
our coats and hats, calling it a day, 
and they trudged back to the locked doors 
of their houses, and I climbed the stairs
to the locked door of my garret, 
where I write you this poem 
instead of my usual email––not about
the extra money I am due––but about
the grains of sand, which seemed 
to sift through my fingers, today,
each grain chafing at another life 
each child imagines living, 
and about the heaviness 
weighing on them, drooping
their shoulders like sand bags 
the residents of some river town carry 
to make the embankments they need 
to hold back the imminent flood.

Nonetheless, 
please remember to credit me 
the higher pay rate I am in fact due, 
if only for offering my empty hand, 
then for filling it with pencils 
I personally sharpened, cursing
the pencil maker for their off-center leads,
as I then gave each student their own wand 
to calculate the magic of wisdom 
and to mark down the answers 
they are trying to find: the true values
of the algebraic x’s in the countless 
disappointments that make up
the lopsided equations of their lives.		

Tomorrow, I’ll sub again,
and I promise to send you 
another reminder. Until then, 
keep the home fires burning
and the old time clock well oiled.
We’ll never know—will we—
when the electric world will fail,
and the spark of connection dies.