Dan Campion

Just a Job

It’s just a job to be the emperor.
A robber baron? Nothing special there.
It’s just a job, another either/or
predicament, a Keystone Kops affair.
It’s just a job to be the empress, too,
or hostess at the ball where golden fish
are party favors. Just a job to do,
like any scullion’s toweling off a dish.
Poor Marcus at his desk, alone at night.
Poor Mrs. Rockefeller (Which one? All),
stuck entertaining bores, a dismal plight.
It’s just a job. There is no curtain call.
A bell tolls and the next shift comes on line,
each little star and planet poised to shine.

Dan Campion’s poetry books are Calypso (Syncline Press), A Playbill for Sunset and Star Anchors (both from Ice Cube Press), and The Mirror Test (MadHat Press). He is the author of Peter De Vries and Surrealism (Bucknell University Press) and a coeditor of Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song (Holy Cow! Press). Dan’s poems have appeared previously in Pulsebeat Poetry Journal and in Able Muse, THINK, Poetry, Rolling Stone, and other journals. He lives in Iowa City, Iowa.