No Personal Feelings Poem by Margaret Alice Second

I feel miserable - as bad as the characters in my
book with a headache which firmly puts me in a
medieval torture rack; now the main protagonist
is forced into athletics & maths though he wants
to write stories while his classmate who's doing
great in sports, is forced into music and reading:
and here I am also ruing the fact of my lacking the
ability to become interested in dry words and drab
descriptions; I so admire my colleagues reaching

A frenzy of pedantic excitement over rewriting a
translation quiz to determine why we translate in
a specific way - my way is to get it over with as my
enthusiasm for parroting other people's words with-
out freedom to change things, quickly wanes - may
not make a line sing nor conduct a rhythmic dance
of words into a flowing symphony - the screeches
of legal geeks must be conveyed literally, without
improving text or melody - no personal feelings

May be left, nothing to pique interest or invite one
to do one's best, and all my colleagues put me to
shame - they're in heaven while I must suppress
a dream of being a dancing princess at the ball of
the King of the Universe - keeping the little alien
in my head occupied by eating and testing every
word, phrase & paragraph against the standard
texts on the Internet - surveying my kingdom in
this work-station with all the flowers bundled into

One corner, dictionaries heaped in the opposite
space, a yellow dishcloth simulating sunbeams
and I, a secret spy, imitating being a translator
while planning to destroy the enemy's lair across
the street where they lie in wait to blow us up first -
but victory is mine and the explosion destroys their
den in a spectacle of red flames - until I see the
Health Safety document waiting like an obedient
child for my guidance to lead it into expressing

What people should do to export to the Congo…