Bri Chapman, Somatic Ritual 4 the corporate hardware store | L*STS

* 

Somatic Ritual 4 the corporate hardware store

after CAConrad 

Bri Chapman

*

L*STS: an Essay Daily Happening | About & Contents

 Lists | Lasts | Losts | Lusts | Other

*

 

for randy and maureen and betsy and lynn and robert and amanda and hailey and laverne and jean and tammy and brandon and brendan and scott and heather and fred and the other 20somethings with whom i split register time and nancy and rodney and the boys in lumber and the gen x punk couple that bought me a bubblegum flavoured lollypop which i saved for when i felt happy, only to suck it into a little pebble two weeks later, crying and unable to finish Past Lives.  

1) Memorize these lines from Purgatorio:  

As sheep come out of their pen, in ones, twos, and threes, and others stand timidly, with eyes and nose towards the ground, and what the first does, the others also do,  

2) Get a seasonal position at a corporate hardware store: preferably one with a red vest, preferably one in your hometown (which you will return to after grad school—though it is important that you insist to everyone who will listen you will not return to your hometown after grad school), preferably the one your father used to work at when he was between jobs.  

3) Wear your only pair of sneakers. These should be a gift, a hand-me-down from your friend in Savannah who insists you throw the old ones (the ones with the holes which you’re wearing now, in the rain, your socks squishing and toes pruning) in her dumpster. You will wear a hole into these new shoes, too. You will wear a hole into every pair of shoes you ever own.  

Wear these sneakers every day on the hard concrete floors of the corporate hardware store.  

4) Do not purchase insoles. When/if your partner purchases them for you, cut them into a shape too small to be useful.  

5) Ask your manager to stand in self checkout for the nine hours of your shift where there is no mat to separate your feet from the hard concrete floors of the corporate hardware store. Resist walking around. Resist helping people.  

6) If you follow instructions without cheating, your feet will begin to burn on hour four. Press your heels harder into the concrete floor of the corporate hardware store. Wait for the burning to become cold. Focus all of your attention onto pressurising this cold burning.  

7) When you have achieved Proper Burn Level, assist a customer with their military ID. Do not make polite conversation, only recite the lines you’ve memorized.  

8) Repeat four days a week.  

9) Return home. Drink White Monster. Write a poem.  

*

“Somatic Ritual 4 the corporate hardware store” was written after the Somatic Rituals conceived by CAConrad with the hope of re-grounding that very particular out-of-body experience brought on through standing on your feet for nine hours in retail; living in the “extreme present,” as they mention in Introduction to (Soma)tic Poetry Rituals. The ritual is intended to place emphasis on invisible labour, workers unacknowledged, often treated as “dead stock.”

Bri Chapman is a writer and visual artist from rural Virginia. Her works can be found published or forthcoming in Unstamatic, Puerto del Sol, Chatterbox!, and others. She thinks that if you haven’t read today’s “Nancy,” you probably should.