CEO Poem by Peter Neil Carroll

When the customs officer at Newark
pulled me aside to ask what I do, I told him
I'm a poet. You write jingles? he replied.

Luckily, I live with a sensible woman who
has a real job at a Silicon Valley company
producing high-tech heat-shrinkable plastics.

She brings me to my first corporate Christmas
party, not-quite bald men clutching drinks
and blond-dyed secretaries sniffing champagne.

Already the big shots are working out whom
to bed when the party runs dry, before they
retreat to their wives raising virtual children.

Unsure of my welcome, I keep to the edges, mind
my business, which is to say take mental notes
for a poem I will write someday on male privilege

until one of the suits notices me standing alone,
approaches with a handshake. Quickly I explain
my ticket of admission and he scans the room

to find the woman I live with. She's from Brooklyn,
he tells me, as if I didn't know, which is his own
home town and goes on to relate his rags-to-riches

spiel. He is affable. I take a chance and ask what
he does. He smiles, he winks, enjoying the question,
concedes he's CEO of this Fortune 500 business.

What about you, he gets around to asking, amused
as if he knows the answer. A poet I admit. His eyes
narrow, measuring carefully. That's what's great

about America, he says, invoking his wisdom, you
can be anything you want—an opera singer, an artist,
a poet—as long as you don't expect to be paid for it