Sebastian Agudelo

Three poems

No Fucking Rome

“Quanti si tegnon or là sù gran regi
che qui staranno come porci un brago,
de sé lasciando orribili dispregi!”

            Dante, Inferno, Canto VIII

“Fifteen years, it’s been fifteen years and…”
like a barfly who drives you to a corner
share in confidence or untangle frame-up,

the Ernie-looking fellow in the elevator
knows me from Adam but swoops
on me to mutter what grumble he had

going on his own as if to keep himself from
going postal, though it lands him back
in the dreary of so many “what nexts.”

“I’m fifty, you know?” Short on ammo, long on scruples—
the difference between him and the “honcho bitch”
that handed him pink slip—he’s left to chunter

and sort the how and why he’s here
though he can’t get past
the years of service, “fifteen years.”

How many puff their way to the top
pretenders come believe they’re sovereign for real?
Boss certainly does. In some idea of justice,

she ends up with the likes of her
to wallow for eternity in filth,
che qui staranno come porci un brago,

her doings here unspeakable, disparaged.
She’s what head-hunter winnowed to come
straighten up the place, make it run.

“From where I stand these fucks are here
to dismantle the joint, sell it for parts.
She walked me through the handbook

I’ve been here fifteen years.”
I have nothing to say. They browbeat their plans
into our day, call it legacy what barnacles

to institutional wreck or national memory too
if corpus juris and corps diplomatique
enter the record to be filed with all the other

sub sigillo workings of perfidy these days.
Perfidy is right, a bit Miltonic but right.
Word on the street, Ernie is the fifth casualty,

and word on the street is all we have to go on.
“I was the one who actually…”
Reader, you can fill in the blanks for him:

overtimes and clean-ups and good ideas.
HR still wants Ernie to turn in his ID.
They’ll purge him from the system,

airbrush key codes and passwords,
something drastic enough, final enough,
upstairs, there is a lineup of loyalists nodding

every time she talks about how things
were done in the place she worked before
as if that were a sort of insight.

Why turn to crestfallen Ernie
who doesn’t get it, is rueful, shell-shocked?
“I don’t see why the other guy wasn’t put

through the same ringer I went through?”
He’s talking about criteria and double standards
about whether they deserve to keep their jobs:

“Two years here and what has she done, eh?
She wants ‘transparency’ she goes around
‘transparency’ she says but never lets on

as to her MO and what’s with all this ‘envision’
shit and that I’m not in the ‘bandwidth.’”
“They love clichés and platitudes” I shrug

with little else for consolation, pinioned at the lobby
like an innocent bystander to gather what’s
salvageable from wreck, hand it back to victim.

“They’re ‘rebranding” she said, and I came back
at her, you know what she said, she said
Rome wasn’t built in a day. Seriously?”

We know how Rome was built.
Write an epic or have one written for you,
abide by its holy missions, its prophecies,

however many villages you scorch.
When in doubt, flip through it eyes closed
your sortes Virgilianae thing, point a random passage

then fire your shot, call it a triumph, however off-target.
Because they go nowhere but up, theirs is perpetual
interregnum, you are always interim,

spear carried with a psychic income
factored somewhere in their gambles.
“This is no fucking Rome, just look around,

it’s not even a wannabee Rome with rotunda
and bust of the bully who endowed the place.”
“They’re more egalitarian around here,” my joke.

“Egalitarian, not equitable.” Ernie corrects
“and you know what else, ah, forget about it,”
waves me off, out the building, exits a final time.

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