https://hamiltonstone.org/hsr46%20poetry.html#duckler

Into the mail chute outside a hospital wait room,

I slid metal plackets to be read from the X-ray lab,

the pay pretty great, though I’d be leaving soon

for college, beside me was a trained tech, a real loutish lad

and a receptionist with plucked brows and a red mouth

he and everyone flirted with, though she had a steady

and confided how at her second job at a drive thru photo booth,

she let him rob her two times while cute security

guards took her statement, always asking for her home phone,

and when she was hungover, she’d have me put the sensors to rest

on the old guys wheeled in for an EKG, scared and prone,

and me an unschooled seventeen, dabbed those cold breasts

and swore that if I lived to sixty (which was in doubt) I’d rather die

than live my whole life on a fat paycheck, in a lab, with a lie.