My Application to be Michael Roth’s New Assistant

Dear Michael Roth,

I am writing in response to the highly prestigious and publicized career of the post of Assistant to You. As per the job description, I have a four–year college degree but no desire to move on. I have a passion for fundraising. Nothing makes me happier than ruining a normal social function by using it as an opportunity to solicit people who probably already think the food is only okay. I am also comfortable with social media, which you will recognize if you have checked the Vaseline Facebook page recently. Michael, I wrote you this poem, because I feel dry prose is an insufficient vehicle to which to tie my qualifications for this position. My qualifications are a Christmas tree, Michael:

Saddle your dreams before you ride ‘em.

        — Mary Webb

Assist. Help.

That is not quite the paradox it seems. A landscape exists

as a temporal constant

And on this landscape, which is psyche, which is

One finds, that is to say, I

Find

Boughs laden with the fruit, which itself bears

And which bears eat —

Self-determining, self-effacing

I put the fun in fundraising

I assist with the veracity of a famished bear

Of a hungry herald at once
being and was —

Knelt. Kneeling.

Helping, assisting.

A gerund? That continuous but infinitely present, that cry for sanctity, that

Tense.  Intense, and yet out

The walls of South College
another realistic tragedy

Of longing and longitudinal desires

For which and to which I devote myself, my

Self, as a whole and as a
collection of pieces as

A bear

A Christmas tree

A contradiction

An assistant.

Sincerely.