“Monotype 12,” Ginger Thompson
	Linda Lappin Living on the Volcano for Naomi Nye, with gratitude When my father tight-roped the Golden Gate With hundreds of other steel headed men And their heroics, tans, and calluses They owned their lives and their work.  But I come home from my cube By way of roads congested with cubed Selves so like my self,  We listen to stock reports, helpless against the secrets Clutching our pink-slips walking Back-straight down narrow paths like Virgins to the mouth of that mountain While our families tend the corporate slopes  In restaurants and gas stations. In paneled offices, on your leather chair Overlooking empty parking lots Where we once fueled your dreams  So focused the bottom line. Even at home, while we ate our meals You crept into our conversations From the newspaper, then the radio From the clattering mouth of that robot reporting  the latest unemployment stats and the forecasts And my studio rent is more  Than my parents spent  On their first home. And it is smaller, like my cube.                           Like my life