“HELP DESK” AND “MECHANIC”
Image designed by Bryan Castille using stock image licensed via Adobe Stock.
HELP DESK
All is not lost, in my opinion.
Something in the way of how anything
can happen ends up meaning most
anything doesn’t, and did you ever notice
it never rains Wednesdays or at least
significantly less in proportion to your Saturdays
or Tuesdays. This is the help desk.
Is there someone or something toward whom
I might be of assistance. Having gone so long
without seeing anybody, I didn’t recognize you
at all. Were you already waiting your turn
at the ordinary help desk, where someone else,
an adult person, commands the electricity
of readiness to the conditioned air at all times.
May I interest you in a complementary cocktail.
When did you last meet someone who died
before you were alive. Depends
on how bad the desire is. On the count of ten,
pretend it’s 1913 for one second. Each time
the help desk person nods, a tiny hand bell
twinkles in the other room. No telling where
it came from or how it got there, but the hinted
patina of dampened moss suggests itself
when illuminated precisely against
the grain of the desk. For the time being,
I settle in with an architectural magazine
and readjust myself to get more comfortable
with the continuous high-pitched whirr
no one present seems to acknowledge.
It sounds to me like weeping pineapple
plants, though I’ve never exactly seen
a pineapple plant up close, and was delighted
and enthralled nonetheless with the help desk
holding me captive in my personal corner
cushioned by the helpful thought bubble
of nearness that might ungulate but never burst.
MECHANIC
Local legend has it that I’ve pedaled
a shopping cart full of limes
across the tundra
and encountered a mechanic there who said
he’d been waiting for me
as he selected a lime at random
and peeled it with a dull chisel.
Though I have bad associations
with mechanics—I was involved
in a terrible accident with someone
who operates tools and heavy
machinery—this one felt more or less
approachable. A few of the bare shrubs
shuddered a little in the slight wind.
Where do we go from here?
was all I could muster given the curious
turn of events. The mechanic shrugged
and turned as if to leave, but
didn’t. He just stood there,
motionless, facing away from my gaze.
The chalky soil made it difficult
to balance my bike on its kickstand
as I cycled through possibilities
for how to get back to basecamp
before nightfall, whatever
that meant. It’s not what you sing,
but how you sing it crooned the exhausted
mechanic as he threw me a lime wedge
over his shoulder. I once tied two mosquitos
together with dental floss. The reason
his words made me recollect the incident
escapes me. They’re unrelated, like
a bicycle and a shopping cart.
They eventually learned to fly
in the same approximate direction,
but could never quite fit through
any of the thousand significant holes
that riddle my earthen hermitage.
Adam Edelman’s poetry has appeared in Bridge, decomP, DeLuge, Fugue, Landfill, Narrative, The Raw Art Review, and Forklift, Ohio, and is forthcoming in Diagram. His chapbook, "It's Becoming A Lot More Difficult to Feel Unchanged" is a two-time finalist for the Verse Tomaž Šalamun Chapbook Prize and winner of the 2020 UnCollected Press Chapbook Prize. His first poetry manuscript is a semi-finalist for the 2023 Conduit Minds On Fire Prize. He holds an MFA in poetry from the New Writers Project at the University of Texas at Austin and a PhD in creative writing from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is a visiting assistant professor at Berea College in Berea, Kentucky, where he teaches creative writing, literature, and composition.