JOHANNA AITCHISON

 

Miss Dust’s Career Advice

 

If you want to leave your job, get a job worth leaving. Leave your leaving party with a spring
                in your shoes & a swagger in your song, thinking, now that was a party worth leaving!
If you want a job worth leaving, pretend not to notice the red goldfish, who’s chewed off the tail
                of the white goldfish with the googly eyes & the golf ball bulge in its abdomen.
                The white goldfish is floating dead in the fish tank next to the reception desk.
If you want a job worth goldfish, walk up to the receptionist, hand in your brain,
                & sit back down on the sunset couch.
Firm-men take your brain to rooms lit with moons.
                Firm-men prod your brain with newspaper words.
               “What will your brain be in five years time?” they ask.
“Don’t worry about your brain!” you say to your empty head.
               (The Firm-men are taking years with your brain).
You’re doing all of this to get a better job.
               Remind yourself of this.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Johanna Aitchison has just finished her doctorate in creative writing from Massey University on the topic ‘Asserting and Locating Value in Contemporary Elliptical-Style Poetry’.