June 5: Job Description
-- by David Lehman

What I like about this place is
everyone has a job to do it's like
a war in that respect my job is
to get people to write things they
would'nt otherwise have written
and to drop a phrase into their
dreaming minds at night your job
is to cross Sixth Avenue in a hurry
as the light changes that girl's job is
to eat a slice of Joe's pizza
her boyfriend's job is to wear
a Yankee cap and a Giuliani mask
hold on he is Giuliani and that guy
who is heckling him is a reporter whose
job is to remember Sirhan Sirhan who
shot Bobby Kennedy on this day
in 1968 a few minutes after I had turned off
the television thinking he had just won
the California primary and would
be our next President


More on the assassination of Bobby Kennedy.