No one wants jury duty, right?
It seems like I just got a summons for jury duty last week, but really it has been about eight years. That time I was juror number eight on a list of about three hundred, and if I hadn’t already had a plane ticket to visit three counties on a business trip, I think I would have been a juror on a murder trial that was estimated to take 6-8 weeks. This time I don’t yet know if I will be put om a jury, and I’m hopeful that if I’m chosen, the trial will be much much shorter than eight weeks. No one wants to spend eight weeks of their life at a murder trial, I assume, but someone has to do it. The hardship of missing out on eight weeks–shoot, I can’t even schedule a meeting with confidence that my schedule is clear if we aren’t talking about three weeks out, minimum.
But there are a lot of things no one wants to do.
Or almost no one, anyway. For example, those jobs featured on television that make you think your own job is fantastic. Such as those in the series that ended in 2012, Dirty Jobs. I mean, roadkill cleaner? Not high on my desired occupation list. To be fair, that series hardly ever showed the entirety of what was included in a job, all the aspects of it. Just the most sensational parts. For example, after you remove some roadkill, you’re probably required to fill out some report about it. Less sensational and disgusting, but more boring. At the end of summer, maybe you need to write a summary of all the roadkill removed and how many cars were in accidents because of the roadkill. Moose 1, car 0, for instance.
And it’s not just yucky paying jobs that no one wants to do.
No one wants to change a diaper. It’s just one of those things that has to be done. No one thinks, hey, I can’t wait to remove the moldy mulch in my flower bed today. But somebody does the job (then sprays the offending area with a baking soda solution after the mold is removed, trust me) whether they want to or not.
Sometimes you do what you need to do, and it isn’t pretty or fun or rewarding. Sometimes it isn’t even on your radar screen when you start the day. Sometimes you get hurt along the way, sometimes someone else gets hurt, sometimes the garbage stinks. That plus a prompt on the Best American Poetry Blog is the general sentiment that spawned this poem of the week.
No One
No one was supposed to get hurt.
There was the Company picnic
and a series of coupons for massages
at the mall. A hair appointment and
given where the stitches were located
shaving was necessary. A short up-do
is an oxymoron as is a quick minute
in which mayonnaise goes bad
in the heat, or sometimes just turns off
as if it couldn’t longer bear
the sight of itself. No one was
supposed to get hurt. There were bottles,
sealed, so tempting, sparkling
green and gold like candies or happy
like a puppy. There was diet ginger
beer, makeshift virgin mojitos,
diet Moscow mules and spiky
four-inch heels. No one was supposed
to get hurt. A long list of
precautions were put in place,
one for tornado warnings,
one for power outages and surges.
We wedged practices into place
properly, sustainably.
No one was supposed to
get hurt. How many times said?
Don’t touch that, it’s hot.
How many days—too many,
it’s always too many days before
we recall hope
isn’t a plan and hell
might be right around the corner.
No one was ready for the elective
and collective mistakes,
the journey unwillingly undertaken, no
one was supposed to get hurt.
If you enjoyed No One
You’ll find more of my poems on this blog or in the collection Stars Crawl Out From Their Caves, which is available in both ebook and print.
Missed a poem of the week? Links to prior weeks are on this page.
Thanks goes out to the blog post & prompt assignment by Virginia Valenzuela, “Next Line, Please: Starting with the End” which appeared on Best American Poetry’s blog, July 18, 2019.