Pregnant Pause, story by Linda McKenney (MY FIRST JOB Poetry and Prose Series)

Pregnant Pause
by Linda McKenney

I sat waiting, in a large theater, with hundreds of other high school students who’d passed an exam for state employment.  We were interviewed according to our grade on the test.  I was fourth in line.  The position was beginning office worker, which meant you had to do whatever a superior desired.  Responsibilities included typing, transcription, filing, making copies and other duties as assigned.  I accepted.

My boss had a monotone voice, so I often dozed off while typing up his letters.  The interesting aspect of that was I continued to type.  Of course, the marks on the paper made no sense, so I had to begin all over again.  If there was a need for more than one copy of the document, we used sheets of carbon paper.  The ink would get all over your fingers and sometimes clothes.  More than two copies required a mimeograph.

This printing process used an ink-filled cylinder and ink pad. Documents were prepared on a special wax-covered stencil on a typewriter that had its ribbon disengaged. The typewriter thus made impressions in the stencil, which was filled with ink and squeezed onto paper by the mimeograph’s roller.

I married six months after I graduated from high school.  Shortly after that, I was interviewed for a promotion.  The man who would be my new boss told me that while I was qualified for the position, he wasn’t going to hire me.

“I noticed that you are wearing a wedding ring,” he said.  “In my experience, young married women get pregnant and then quit their jobs.  I don’t want to invest time training you and have you leave.”

What he said made sense to me, so I never questioned his decision.

Six months later I was pregnant and quit my job.

IMAGE: “Pregnant Woman” by Otto Dix (1930).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Linda McKenney is a Personal Life Coach, Motivational Speaker, and Writer, specializing in Mindful Living and Eating. She continually reinvents herself, and her new adventure is writing creative nonfiction. Her most recent work is published in Silver Birch Press, 101 Word Short Stories, The Survivor’s Review, The Rush, and Helen: A Literary Magazine. You can join Linda on her Mindful journey by visiting her blog –- majokmindfuleating.com. She also has an alter ego at Susanbanthony.live.

Job Candidate, story by Steve Bogdaniec (MY FIRST JOB Poetry and Prose Series)

Job Candidate
by Steve Bogdaniec

Subject: San Francisco Area – Base + Uncapped Commission with Fortune 500 Company

Job Candidate I Found on Monster.com’s First Name,

My name is Guy I’m Writing This For—who can sell wonderfully but can’t write for shit, seriously, you should have seen this before I reworked it—and I am actually two people pretending to be one executive recruiter working with an Actual Company You Will Hopefully Be Impressed By. We would like to prescreen you for an interview with this company, and the “we” here is Headhunting Company That No Longer Exists, not Guy I’m Writing This For PLUS me—Steve—the one who actually found you among the jobless on Monster late at night.

• Actual Company You Will Hopefully Be Impressed By, global leader in Document Management, has an Outside Sales position in your area, mostly because the turnover is ungodly and they’re always looking for people

• Base salary 30-60K, compensation structure of 70k to 150k with car allowance, and uncapped commission, which, judging by how many people we actually got to take these positions back in 2007 and 2008, will not be enough to sway you

• Successful performance at Territory Sales Representative level earns the opportunity for either a Major Account or Sales Team Manager promotion, though, remember, “successful” is apparently a very subjective term with Actual Company You Will Hopefully Be Impressed By

Please forward me an up-to-date copy of your resume because Steve probably emailed 25 people in three different cities tonight and we can’t keep track of you all. Upon receiving your resume, you will be contacted within 48 hours to schedule an interview. Or 72, depending, we’ll see.

Best Regards,

Guy I’m Writing This For

Executive Recruiter

Headhunting Company That No Longer Exists
Office: Somebody else’s phone number by now

IMAGE: “Fishing” by Jean-Michel Basquiat (1981).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: For this piece, I have altered an actual email template that I edited and sent out to job candidates. In 2007 and 2008, I worked for a struggling “executive recruiting” firm that had contracts with companies looking for business-to-business salespeople. We found candidates to interview for the positions, and if they were hired and lasted 90 days, we got paid. ¶ A friend of mine brought me in, knowing that I needed work. He would work during the day and do all of the talking—and selling, which I was not good at. I worked at night, finding us qualified candidates on Monster or Career Builder. Because of my writing background, I also either wrote or edited all of our copy. It seemed simplest to represent ourselves as one person, so we did. ¶ It was not technically my first job, but looking back, I can definitely say that it was my first “real” job—my first brush with the humanity and inhumanity of commerce. The work was frustrating because both sides—the companies and the candidates—were too picky, and perfect matches were hard to come by. Still, it was very generous of my friend to hire me in the first place. I will always look back on the job fondly because of him.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Steve Bogdaniec is a writer and teacher, currently teaching at Wright College in Chicago. HE has had poetry and short fiction published in numerous journals, most recently Eclectica Magazine, Silver Birch Press, One Sentence Poems, and Blood Lotus. His work can also be found in the Nancy Drew Anthology: Writing & Art Inspired by Everyone’s Favorite Female Sleuth.

June 24, 2017 — The fifth anniversary of the Silver Birch Press blog!

We started the Silver Birch Press blog on June 24, 2012 — and today celebrate our fifth anniversary. Thank you to our community of contributors, readers, and nearly 10,000 followers for making the Silver Birch Press blog part of your daily routine.  Cheers!

For a trip down memory lane, below is a replay of our first post (June 24, 2012).

To me, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is the quintessential summer book. It chronicles the hot months of 1922, when the Great War was over and the Great Depression was yet to come. The 1920s were a blissful time when possibilities seemed limitless — and everyone seemed to be having fun (despite, or perhaps because of, Prohibition). These were the years when the cocktail was borne (to make the booze go farther), when women bobbed their hair and danced with abandon. It was The Jazz Age, as Fitzgerald called it — a name that stuck.

Every time I pick up The Great Gatsby — and I’ve read the book perhaps a dozen times — I am drawn in and enraptured by the book’s poetry and romance. To quote the song Kiplinger plays: In the morning, In the evening, ain’t we got fun. Yes, Gatsby is great fun — even with its sad ending. The story seems fresh and real, even though it took place 90 years ago.

I believe, though, that required high school reading of Gatsby is ill advised. Teens are too young to appreciate the longing and loss portrayed in the book — which is much better read after you’ve suffered some major hard knocks out in the big, bad world.

We all have a Gatsby in us — a hopeless romantic, an impossible dreamer who tries to hang onto the inner spark that makes life worth living. So pour yourself a lemonade (or something stronger), plop yourself in a lawn chaise, and dive into the greatest novel of all time. Happy Summer!

Tending the Dogs, story by Elizabeth Hilts (MY FIRST JOB Poetry and Prose Series)

Tending the Dogs
by Elizabeth Hilts

“A job would be good for her,” Mrs. Pierce told my mother when I was 12 and the chaos of Mother’s schizophrenia was taking a firm hold on our lives. “She should go work with my daughter, tend the dogs.”

Mother drove me over to the Count and Countess’s stone mansion on the Point. He had escaped the Hungarian Revolution with his title; she was rumored to be a Guggenheim. They bred Miniature Schnauzers. Countess and Mother chatted over tea and small cakes carried in by a uniformed maid. “She can start on Saturday morning,” the Countess said.

Five mornings a week the cook doled out each dog’s breakfast: hard-boiled egg, cottage cheese, and kibble. I carried the bowls out to the kennel where the dogs quivered in their crates, stacked four high, five wide. Twenty of them, plus the Count’s dog, Dolly, who I collected from his suite where he lounged on the bed, lounged in the bubble bath. Dolly would not come when called. “You’ll have to come get her,” he’d tell me, his robe falling open, the bubbles parting.

After breakfast, I brushed their teeth, hand clamped firmly around each muzzle while they growled deep in their throats. Washed and blow-dried their cunning little beards. They took their revenge during the walk around the point of land overlooking the tidal inlet, skittering into the underbrush before charging out to nip at my ankles. I was already accustomed to the mad ambush but wasn’t yet immunized from fear.

The cook made me lunch: hot soup and a sandwich, doled out on plain white china. My mother had already stopped cooking by then. I ate in the kennel, understanding that it was possible to be grateful for small simple things.

IMAGE: “Miniature Schnauzer” by Watercolor Girl. Prints available at fineartamerica.com.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I loved and hated my first job in almost equal parts but I’d never completely understood why, of course, until attempting to write this piece. That’s part of why I write: to gain access to the parts of myself that remain shrouded somehow.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Elizabeth Hilts writes memoir, essays, and fiction; though she has written poetry, no one needs to really know about that. During the academic year, she toils in the fields of academe as an adjunct instructor of English and related subjects. She is in a constant state of revision both as a writer and as a human being. Her work has appeared in Spry Literary Journal, Extract(s), and in the Black Lawrence Press anthology, Feast.

A Little Color, poem by Alexis Rotella (MY FIRST JOB Poetry and Prose Series)

A Little Color
by Alexis Rotella

About to take off
for Capitol Hill
the future senator
scowls when he sees the report
I typed on hot pink paper.

IMAGE: “Untitled” by Mark Rothko (1953).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Fresh out of high school I went to work for the Appalachian Commission in Washington, D.C. where I was one of a dozen girls in the typing pool. The job was boring — I thought adding a little color to Jay Rockefeller’s job would perk things up.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Alexis Rotella is a veteran writer of Japanese poetry forms in English. Her latest books, Between Waves and The Color Blue were published by Red Moon Press. She is currently the judge for Ito-En Haiku Grand Prize Contest.  A practitioner of Oriental Medicine in Arnold, Maryland, Alexis is also a mobile photographer and digital artist.

College Sophomore at Jack in the Box by Tamara Madison (MY FIRST JOB Poetry and Prose Series)

College Sophomore at Jack in the Box
by Tamara Madison

They start me at the drink station, lunch shift.
Orders flood the kitchen. Soon I am using both hands
to pop lids onto soda cups, unaware that there is
a right way to do it. Diet Coke pours all over me,
7-Up slurries the floor. It takes a few orders to figure out
how the shake machine works. At the end of the shift,
there is shake mix in my hair, soda and coffee
all over the floor. The manager asks to see me.

“Some people are cut out for this sort of work,
and some people aren’t,” he muses. “Are you telling me
not to come back tomorrow?” “Oh, no, no! Come back
of course!” And I do. By the start of the second shift,
I have learned how to spread my palm over the lid
as I pop it on the cup. I learn how to read
the order display. I discover that onion rings
are better than I thought, that shake mix
and coffee can brighten my day, and that hamburgers
even at Jack in the Box, are made from meat.

By the end of the week, the other employees
have shed their wariness and are almost friendly.
After work each day, I drive to Pacific Beach;
whether the afternoon is sunny or chilled with fog,
I bathe in the cool waves until all the grease
and the sticky soda fizz wash into the green Pacific.

PHOTO: The first Jack in the Box restaurant (San Diego, 1960s).  Established in 1951, the chain was the first to use an intercom system for drive through orders.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Tamara Madison grew up on a citrus farm in California’s Coachella Valley.  Her poems have appeared in numerous publications, including Pearl, Chiron Review, and The Writer’s Almanac. She is the author of the chapbook The Belly Remembers and two full-length poetry collection Wild Domestic  and Moraine, all published by Pearl Editions. She has just retired from 29 years of teaching English and French in Los Angeles and she is over-the-moon thrilled!

I Was a Carvel Soft Serve Queen, poem by Kathleen A. Lawrence (MY FIRST JOB Poetry and Prose Series)

I Was a Carvel Soft Serve Queen
by Kathleen A. Lawrence

My first big jump from babysitting money to minimum wage,
and I was thrilled. I was out of the house on a school night
and I was employed by my favorite spot for treats, a mystery
palace of Fudgie the Whale Cakes, Cookie Puss, sugar cones,
peach topping, and space-themed ice cream flying saucers.

It would be the first time I got a real printed paycheck;
I remember buying a pucker shirt the color of lemon-lime
to show off my sweet-sixteen curves and I had money
left over from my twenty-six dollars and thirty-seven cents.

Since childhood I had felt there was a real artist hidden deep
within me. Swirling soft vanilla and chocolate twists suspended
atop a crisp, tasty but somehow tasteless, wafer cone became
my medium. Somehow, as though I had studied the craft
for years my wrist would know how just to turn and curve
and pull the lever creating the perfect design topped
with a meringue tip like a wave caught mid-crash.

My manager saw the potential in me right away and soon
I was working most nights with a line out the door and spilling
into the parking lot, especially when the heat would start
melting their resistance to ice cream. Customers would
light like butterflies fluttering: baseball teams, lovers, friends,
families, teens with their parents’ station wagon, any colorful
social group busy and flapping waiting for their sweet nectar.

I loved the lines, the pressure, because it only made my magic
spin faster into sundaes crowned with rich dark fudge and
a cheerful maraschino cherry. Tall scoops of favorite flavors
with sprinkles and jimmies and chips and fruit and salty nuts
were the orders I built. The freezer contained my palette
of lovely pastels like strawberry, sherbet, and the cool vibrants
like black raspberry, mint chip, banana, and the decadent tones
of almond to coffee to eggnog to chocolate to ripple to decadence.

By the end of my long, sticky, marshmallowy summer
I was proud of the ice cream guns I had developed, the money
I had saved, and the impressionistic dairy dreams, whipped cream
wishes, and modern silky works of edible art I had created.

PHOTO: Carvel ice cream shop in Irondequoit, New York, late 1970s.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This poem is about my first job outside of house chores and lots of babysitting of siblings, which started early for me. I really enjoyed reminiscing about the seventies when I spent my halcyon days wearing peasant blouses, hoop earrings, Maybelline, Levis, and eating cherry bonnet vanilla ice cream cones. Because my first three serious jobs involved twisting, scooping, and piling high dairy treats, I imagine that I have more confection- and cone-inspired poetry in me still.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Kathleen A. Lawrence has had poems appear recently in Rattle online, Eye to the Telescope, Silver Blade Magazine, haikuniverse, New Verse News, Inigo Online Magazine, and The Epic Presidential Poem: The Trump Years (section 74), as well as in two anthologies memorializing Prince, Delirious and A Prince Tribute. A poem in Altered Reality Magazine was nominated for a 2017 Rhysling Award from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association. She was Poet of the Week at Poetry Super Highway in January 2017.

Keeping Afloat, poem by Stephen Howarth (MY FIRST JOB Poetry and Prose Series)

Keeping Afloat
by Stephen Howarth

I quit school, or school quit me, and
I needed an income. There was no grand plan
beyond the intention to be a writer,
being sure my career would be with the pen;

but penury demanded pounds and pence.
A chance arose, and within days I was
a milkman, an invisible but essential backbone
of the community. With my alarm set for 3 a.m.,

I was daily in the dairy by 3.30 to load the milk float —
my wagon! — with a ton of fresh-bottled liquid.
My hair was long then, worn carefree in
a ponytail to halfway down my back . . .

. . . and there were bright pearly mornings when
I gazed out over the vale, trees punctuating
the sea of mist below, and at the hilltop, free of traffic,
I released the brake and sped to 70 miles an hour,

propelled by that massive weight of milk in
a float designed to do 20 max. Gliding to a halt, I ran up
the paths, put down the orders, picked up the empties,
and gave so much away: potatoes, bread,

extra items I forgot to record — and when queried,
had to pay for from my hard-earned wage. Once,
reversing inadvertently, I crushed the foot
of a colleague. Once, I was surprised by a sleepy

customer who appeared dreamlike in her nightdress,
reaching to take the milk from my hands.
Once, I was charmed by a little girl who walked
together with her sister as I ran up the path:

“Hello big milkman ponytail man!” I returned her smile —
then, as I ran back to the float, heard her puzzlement:
“But — mans don’t have ponytails!” “Hush,” said her sister.
Now the ponytail’s long gone. The pen delivered.

AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: I’m sorry that no photo exists of me as “Big Milkman Ponytail Man,” one of my proudest titles. The registration plate on this float shows it was operational a year later than my first job, and unlike this lucky milkman I never had an assistant; but otherwise it’s very like the one I used every day. Loading a ton of milk by hand and running to make every delivery was a great way to keep fit — better in that regard than writing . . .

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I’ve often been slightly doubtful that a poem can write itself; an internal voice reminds me that “poiema,” the Ancient Greek root of poem, means “a thing made”: words carefully chosen, stanzas carefully crafted to meet one or another set of rules. But “Keeping Afloat” is an exception — not solitary but unusual for me — and it was instantly evoked by the “My First Job” prompt. It obeys no formal structure and really is a poem that seemed to write itself. The episodes within it are all true; the major one omitted is the recurring nightmare I had at the time — of my milk float crashing through my bedroom door to tell me I was late for work.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Born and brought up in England, Stephen Howarth is part-English, part-Scottish, and half-Shetland. He has a Master’s degree with Distinction in creative writing from Nottingham Trent University. He has been a professional author of history almost all his working life. His subjects are wide-ranging but he is particularly known for naval history, notably including To Shining Sea, his history of the U.S. Navy. Currently, he has 15 major books and more than 25 minor ones to his credit. His poetry has been published in the English language and in the Shetland dialect. He has a special liking for Southern California and its invigorating poetical community.

The Art of Cheese, story by Jayne Buckland (MY FIRST JOB Poetry and Prose Series)

The Art of Cheese
by Jayne Buckland

My first job before I went to Art College was scraping the mould off and rewrapping cheese.

Sixteen years old in a white coat that was too big and a hairnet from my Granny, I was kept in a windowless, whitewashed backroom of a village supermarket doing this illicit activity every Saturday.

There I would spend whole days scraping green furry creatures off the shiny, sometimes sweaty, yellow pieces of cheddar and numerous exotic cheeses for the 1970s’ cheese board. Some of these pieces of cheese became old friends. I would unwrap and scrape them at the beginning of the month and say hello again when they would reappear, sometimes week after week; because I discovered that once the mould had got started it wasn’t going to give up. Its ghost remained, unseen to the human eye.

I would first unwrap the cling-film and place the cheese on the wooden board. If there was mould, I would have to use my wire cheese cutter. The pleasure of this was so satisfying, cutting away through the solid moistness and restoring its original hue. But this enjoyable activity was carefully monitored by the Store Manager to make sure I did not cut too much away. Then it was wrapped in the cling-film and on a heated plate I would seal the plastic and weigh and label it again.

The textures and structures of this most delicious substance, and the joys of cutting, scraping and covering it with a stretchy clear plastic, has never left me. I formed little sculptures to sit on the Deli counter.  Cheddar, Stilton, Gloucester, Apricot Wensleydale, Brie, Chèvre sec, Gorgonzola were part of my new beginning of life in the workplace. They were my small works of Art that would go on sale and bought by Art collectors.

IMAGE: Gourmet cheese plate, found at jerseypottery.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jayne Buckland lives in North London with her three cats. She enjoys the stimulation of the City and the peace and quiet of the Green belt to write. In her Day job, she works as a teacher and the evenings are taken up with singing with the local Operatic Society. Her ambition is to become a full-time writer and artist.

My First Boss, story by Vincent Francone (MY FIRST JOB Poetry and Prose Series)

My First Boss
by Vincent Francone

My first boss told me to wash dishes, showed me the sink, the hose a hook that I was to position, squeeze out the blustery stream, hunt for flour and red sauce caking the bits of machine.

Years later, I lied—told a girl I was fired for smoking Camels in the kitchen, even said I’d ashed my cigarette into the dishwater.

Truth: I was slow.  It was my first job. I had no drive, no desire to move up to stretching dough or painting with red sauce, making mozzarella rain, counting the precise number of pepperoni discs per uncooked pie, smiling at mall dwellers who condescended to my station having decided against three straight days of Dairy Queen burgers.

The boss had the decency to fire me over the phone.  He saved my mom a trip to the mall.  A week later, I picked up my check.  It wasn’t much, but I deserved less.

IMAGE: “Spoons” by Paul Wonner (1964).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Vincent Francone is a writer from Chicago whose memoir, Like a Dog, was published in the fall of 2015.  He won first place in the 2009 Illinois Emerging Writers Competition (Gwendolyn Brooks Award) and is at work on a collection of poems and stories. Visit vincentfrancone.com to read his work or say hi.