I.
Protocol We have a
reputation for
losing our minds, going
postal, suicide. Human is
to want to open what is
not open. My job,
to never witness. Sometimes
I want to ask the women
on their doorsteps to unseal
a package in front
of me. Just one. II.
Arlene The lines
are long, you don’t
know how we wait to lock
the door at closing. Everybody
has an agenda. Tapping
your feet like waiting
is a consequence of my
slow stamp. A smile
costs more than forty-four cents, I am not
responsible for raising that price but thank
you for asking again. I don’t
do the billing, just take the checks and with
them the blame for the
wars and the lateness, your
empty stomach and every
red light on the way home. III.
Weekday Every
morning I stay to see
her, barefoot down the
path, baby slung on her
hip. I can’t
open her letters, but read
the addresses, count birthday
cards and bundle
them together so she’ll
see them all at once. Sometimes
in the truck I flip through
her catalogues, touching
every page I see us
inside. We have
the life with the dog— striped
sheets and beach bags, down
pillows to break open and
dance under, feathers tangled in our
hair. IV.
Transit Return to
sender, no final
destination — so
close to home
Rachel
L. Snyder received her MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College. Her
work has appeared in The FictionWeek Literary Review, Bird’s Eye
reView, and Quick Lucks, and is forthcoming in Big Lucks. She teaches
writing at SUNY Purchase College, and spends most of her time outside
in New York, listening. There
was a month last year when I found myself frequenting the post office
more often than usual. I spent a week trying to inhabit the minds of
postal workers in my poetry, and chiseled this series from that. My
imagined postal workers deliver the secrets of entire neighborhoods,
but are forbidden to know them. Every day, they have to suppress this
human, primal curiosity and disengage. If it were I, the greatest
reward would be to see what’s inside.
