day ONE HUNDRED and FIFTEEN

Consciousness Raising

Fresh from college

I landed the Big Job:

Conglomerate Electric—

expense account, car.

I dressed for success,

like a man, but with breasts

in a navy blazer, starched blouse,

scarf knotted like a tie

at the neck.

I drove the gray maze of freeway

crisscrossing the basin,

selling small electrics

to Savons, The Broadway.

The car was a Plymouth,

AM radio, no air.

Volume up, windows down

I sped the freeways to the Bee Gees

uh uh uh stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.

to minimize downtime

I ate lunch while I drove,

foraging my briefcase

for Granola bars stashed

with other vital supplies—

spare pantyhose, tampons

and Valium tucked under brochures

for blow dryers.

Rushing to make a dozen calls a day:

to the drug store whose manager

threatened to kill me

if his order came late,

to the warehouse with rats nested

in returned toaster ovens,

to the five-and-dime

with armed guards

patrolling the aisles,

back to the office where Hustler

fold-outs plastered the phone bank,

where my boss drank gin

from a flask at his desk

and daily asked

for a quickie in the showroom.

None of my friends were happy

in their new careers.

Some went back to school,

took women’s studies

examining their vaginas

with speculum and mirror.

Some joined EST, got their shit together.

Others left their families,

were re-birthed or re-born.

Seventy-nine slouched into eighty,

Reagan elected, John Lennon dead.

No matter how fast I drove

I never got anywhere.

Staying alive

became the only job

I could handle.

--Donna Hilbert

from Transforming Matter PEARL Editions, 1994