Paul Tanner

Tanner

Paul Tanner lives in England. His latest collection, Shop Talk: Poems for Shop Workers, was published by Penniless Press last winter.

doled out

a meat head

with scabs on his knuckles

walks in, walks past

all of us sitting here

who’ve been waiting hours,

marches straight up to a crony,

slaps his jobsearch book down

on the crony’s desk,

leans over the crony and says: sign

so the crony signs it

smiling

and the meat head,

he takes his jobsearch book back

says: nice one, see you in two weeks

and marches back out …

an hour or so later, you’re called up.

you’ve barely sat down

when the crony holds his hand out,

says: jobsearch book?

so you hand it over

and he flips through the ten or twelve pages of job applications

you’ve listed in the past fortnight

and frowning, he says: no.

you’re obviously not making enough effort

to find work. denied.

and the cogs turn. and your stomach churns

on those cogs

and fuck all else,

tis always the fucking season, churn, churn, churn.