“Advice for Appointments”

 

1.

Ambassador to Slovak Republic: having been subject to unfriending be ready to locate where were you when it happened.

Member of the Parole Board: forgiveness isn’t endless cause it starts.

Member of the Social Security Tribunal: think our taxes, their small curve, and one great ‘did’ in reserve.

Chair of the Canadian Cultural Property Export Review Board: the old flags may not be burned as well.

Ambassador to Equatorial Guinea: many movements dress as holidays.

Part-time member the Parole Board: consider the notion of a part-time prisoner; how would ‘life’ satisfy?

2.

Commissioner of Official Languages: swath ya’ll done get the blame, rest ya’ll right with me.

Member of the Social Security Tribunal: gluttons feel it first.

Member of the National Energy Board: yes is a straight line; watch for the Y-shaped imitator.

Member of the Security Intelligence Review Committee: ask a few more times what’s new.

Chair of the Canada Mortgage & Housing Corporation: remember no one can see everyone you’ve left behind, because you won’t.

3.

Part-time member of the Parole Board: a big crime is impossibly personal.

President of the Economic Development Agency of Canada for the Regions of Quebec: your money is so divisible, no?

Federal Court Justice: there is no glamour in refusing almost most but not most.

Chief Negotiator for the St. Anne’s Hospital Transfer Project: that pizza you didn’t eat and those birds with one leg and the bottom part of the calculation; I could go on but I won’t.

CEO of Montreal Science Centre and Vice President, Canada Lands Company: yes, men have many jobs, many antithetical to their beliefs, many self-employed.

Chief of the British Columbia Treaty Commission: treaty isn’t a word like smelly or friendly.

4.

Member of the Immigration & Refugee Board: nothing is slow.

Member of the Social Security Tribunal: the elderly organize tragically well.

Member of the Parole Board: all our examples are criminal.

 

(Editor’s note: Poet Jeff Blackman is a federal employee)

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