A graceful arrangement of the baubles of your enthusiasm.
Why you matter, retail. An explanation of how
you were gingerbreaded from the dough of their firm at birth.

Your motto is avoidio missteppus. Your interest in grammar
grows abnormally. You long for font synergy.
Your other motto is Chuck Norris does not apply for jobs;

jobs apply for Chuck Norris. You’re ridic. In take two, you simmer
your illustrious history into six slick bullet points. Later,
you cut the least glimmering facet. Autocorrect will react

like a crisis counsellor. The person you are describing
is awesome, you realize, or pathological. Your draft reflects you
the way a can of Diet Coke does. You delete If I were a question,

I would be burning because it is an awkward topic sentence.
In draft three, you shift the Most Polished Paragraph
into The Power Position. It is above you. You count to ten.

You mamabird your rebuttals into the beaks
of their tacit objections. You pour in “professional register”
as if from a tap of weak beer. Sincerely, you write, sincerely. Sincerely …

Marcus McCann is a poet and journalist. He is the author of Soft Where (2009, Chaudiere Books) and The Hard Return (2012, Insomniac) and a number of chapbooks, including The Glass Jaw (2010, Bywords), Town in a Long Day of Leaving (2010, above/ground), and Force Quit (2008, The Emergency Response Unit). He is a winner of the John Newlove Award and the EJ Pratt Medal, and was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert and the Robert Kroetsch awards. He now lives in Toronto, where he studies law.

☝ BACK TO TOP