“Front Desk, 9/11”
The catalogue lies open
to Chair 47B,
its diagram promising lumbar certainty
in a world that has just
crumbled in on itself.
The sales phone blinks red,
a small emergency
that no longer knows its scale.
Someone wants a quote
on bulk swivel units
while the television
in the break room
shows a skyline
rewriting its own grammar.
The mob ledger on the counter
still smells of toner and sweat,
columns of numbers
trying to impersonate order.
But every digit trembles now,
as if the ink remembers
that bodies are not inventory.
A dust‑fleck floats
through the fluorescent light,
slow as a thought
trying to decide
whether it still belongs
to the category “ordinary.”
The executive’s badge
reflects the screen —
a tiny mirrored tower
falling again and again
in the plastic sheen
of corporate identification.
Outside, a forklift beeps,
insisting on its ritual,
moving pallets of chairs
designed for the posture
of people who believed
tomorrow was a stable noun.
And in the pause
between two news anchors
searching for language
that no longer exists,
the front desk becomes
a threshold without a name —
a place where symbols
forget their jobs
and objects remember
they were never neutral.
And the switchboard’s fireworks
go blank.
.
