That girl was funny! The treasure of America, indeed. Fifteen years old? In the US they'd call that statutory rape. I would imagine it was quite a jump from the convent to the factory. I AM glad it worked for you. It gives me something of a melancholy feeling of hope that didn't go quite way I'd hoped.

On Oct 27, 2012, at 9:07 PM, Andrew Burke <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> The poem was very enjoyable, if that's the terminology, and brought back
> some lustful memories of my own. I hitched across the nation at 18 and
> worked in Sydney factories. My god, the girls were rough and tough - it was
> a shock to me from the convent girls who were my sisters and their friends!
> I've been involved up and down the social ladder since - but my favourite
> still remains the 15 year old US girl who, as she dropped her panties in a
> cheap hotel in Perth, declared: 'Now you see the treasure of America!' It
> was a very Henry Miller moment that will last until my last.
> 
> More poems, Kenneth. I always think you sell yourself short as a poet.
> 
> Andrew
> 
> On 28 October 2012 10:58, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
>> I don't doubt that Laura was quite real, Ken, as was Jenna. There is
>> something so noir about remembered females 'in harness' so to speak. How
>> aware they were of their power to enrapture we will never know. Anyway you
>> collected more than you imagined from the agency it seems. Maybe you are on
>> to something with the memorability of blue collar compadres. I recall
>> supermarket cashiers and packers, apartment store fellow workers, even
>> clients as a failed gardener, vividly, where office people have faded.
>> 
>> On 28/10/2012, at 12:21 AM, Kenneth Wolman <[log in to unmask]>
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> Not that it matters, but Laura was quite real. Even to the name. A bunch
>> of guys, married, single,  teens, old guys all had one thought. I can only
>> imagine, 52 years down the road, what's become of her. Well, I had several
>> blue collar jobs over my life--the collection agency, to an IBM factory
>> while I was in graduate school, newspaper delivery manager, supermarket
>> deli clerking, telephone company phone support. Except for my time in
>> investing bank back offices in the '90s, the blue collar work was more
>> memorable than most of the college jobs--better people, a true sense of
>> teamwork. Academe had a Screw You attitude I never found in blue collar.
>>> 
>>> Ken
>>> 
>>> On Oct 26, 2012, at 11:20 PM, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]>
>> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> It's not exactly relevant, Kenneth but it does stir up memories of
>> taking a blue collar job to augment an a burgeoning white collar existence.
>> In my case, it was a plastic factory in Hawthorn for six weeks, earning
>> money before the next year at uni. My Laura the bookkeeper was
>> Greek-Australian smock-wearing Jenna, writing with black crayon on
>> cardboard boxes full of stacked toilet seat lids 'Six only, black'.
>>>> 
>>>> Bill
>>>> 
>>>> On 27/10/2012, at 3:51 AM, Kenneth Wolman <[log in to unmask]>
>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> It's an old poem. Still strikes me. If it's relevant, that's scary.
>>>>> 
>>>>> ALLEGHENY REALTY CORP.
>>>>> 
>>>>> A collection man had shown me a door,
>>>>> right by a dingy fileroom on the 3rd floor
>>>>> Allegheny Realty Corp. it said, in black stencil.
>>>>> Behind the door was a broom closet.
>>>>> It was some slumlord's rent-check mail-drop:
>>>>> a place he could go without fear of getting shot
>>>>> by some tenant-in-arrears.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Downstairs, on Two, we worked the tenants who owed our client:
>>>>> a Su Credito Es Bueno Aqui jewelry store on the street floor
>>>>> that gave Easy Terms, sold the Norteamericano White Man's Dream
>>>>> to cleaning girls from Bayamon, Black countermen,
>>>>> day-laborers without Union books:
>>>>> the Olympic TV, sapphire ring, Gruen watch, or set of silverplate.
>>>>> We ogled Laura, the hourglass body Puerto Riquena bookkeeper,
>>>>> said she was worth a sterling silver diaphragm,
>>>>> and that we'd fight to install it ourselves.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Divorced guys and a high-school kid: me.
>>>>> I knew where I had come from: an upstairs neighbor
>>>>> fixed an off-the-books summer job for a kid
>>>>> with a future in English Lit'ra'cha.
>>>>> But I never dreamed what fate had brought these
>>>>> wrinkled collars and dollar ties to this place.
>>>>> I wondered only why these middle-aged men looked at me with envy
>>>>> or anger, snarled "Kid, why the fuck are you here?"
>>>>> as they hung up from a minimum wage debtor
>>>>> who'd told them to burn in hell for the hundredth time that week.
>>>>> 
>>>>> They always fell behind, our clients,
>>>>> so we garnished them because that's what the job was:
>>>>> called the Brooklyn Civil Court and kept a magistrate hopping:
>>>>> The buff cards of broken dreams were piled floor to ceiling,
>>>>> scattered on desktops, wedged under phone books.
>>>>> We worked the horn to work out terms: but got false addresses,
>>>>> disconnected phones, crazed accented voices telling us to
>>>>> make much too good friends with our mothers,
>>>>> or to put our fates in the hands of the gods
>>>>> as those we garnished had put theirs.
>>>>> 
>>>>> At noon I'd cross the street, sit in the old Pennsylvania Station,
>>>>> marked by '61 for the wrecker's ball,
>>>>> look up at my glass ceiling,
>>>>> and thank God that my ticket was punched,
>>>>> that I would go to college in the fall,
>>>>> forget this place, forget the vengeful phone calls,
>>>>> forget the cursing manager who struck out last night
>>>>> and took it out on a widow,
>>>>> forget my sticky virgin night-fantasies of Laura the bookkeeper,
>>>>> and inhabit a world of high art, of poetry
>>>>> that would soar into an Avalon of misty hills and kings.
>>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Andrew
> http://hispirits.blogspot.com/
> 'Undercover of Lightness'
> http://walleahpress.com.au/recent-publications.html
> 'Shikibu Shuffle'
> http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/new-from-aboveground-press-shikibu.html