The Clerk
after Tim Seibles
One of the sounds, one of the
first sounds
as I arrive at five a.m. is the
steady knocking
of Bernadette stocking shelves.
She’s
arranging tubes of deodorant in
a line, again
and again, swooping low and then
rising
like hummingbirds I’ve seen
buzzing
from jacaranda to bougainvillea,
flickering wings
that suspend those improbably
small
bodies in the air. This is the
job they
must do: from
dawn to dusk it’s work.
Bernadette pauses to say hello
before moving to the next aisle
to lotions, bath and hand soap.
Her tap, tap, tap is the steady
rhythm
of her days and mine and for a
moment,
a brief moment, as the sun
outside humbles
the sky, I believe that I am
made for the herd,
for these movements inside a big
city.
renee
simms is a poet and writer originally from
Detroit, Michigan. A graduate of the University
of Michigan and Wayne State University Law
School, she received her MFA in Creative Writing
from Arizona State University. Her work appears
in the anthologies Voices from Leimert Park
(Tsehai 2006), Mischief Caprice & Other
Poetic Strategies (Red Hen Press 2004) and
Step into a World: A Global Anthology of the
New Black Literature (Wiley & Sons 2000).
Her poems and stories may also be found in
North American Review, African Voices,
Hawai’i Review, Inkwelll, Our Stories,
Oregon Literary Review, and 42 Opus.
A Cave Canem and PEN Emerging Voices fellow,
Renee currently lives and teaches in Arizona.