Sir, I Just Work Here
Kashawn Taylor
The ice machine’s been broken for a month. The air conditioning exhaled its last refreshing breath long before that. The soda’s as flat and lifeless as my voice when I say, “No, ma’am, we still have no ice.”
Sweat snakes down my spine, my red manager polo a towel for my drenched brow. I am stuffed: full from eating words HR might frown upon from their icebox somewhere out in the Midwest. Those words, hot and beefy and square like this pall of pasty air, claw their way up my esophagus. Their talons stretch my face into a customer service rictus.
A customer at the window: “Is the AC working hard or hardly working?”
Ha.
There are questions I’d like to ask, too. Questions whose answers may melt my brain faster than this heat. Questions. The answers essential, like air or water or love. What is the meaning of this little hell called life? Why did we evolve a society where we work until we die? Why do the big bads prosper while the little men suffer?
Does this poem even matter?
Kashawn Taylor is a writer and educator from Connecticut. His poems, essays, and stories have appeared in such magazines and journals as Poetry, Sequestrum, The Offing, Lucky Jefferson, and many more. His full-length collection of poetry, subhuman., was published in March 2025 by Wayfarer Books. He teaches creative writing at Gotham Writers Workshop. Keep up with him on Instagram: @kashawn.writes
Table of Contents for A Formal Feeling