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Southern Cultures 13.1 (2007) 71-72

The Devil Is In
Poetry by Tanya Olson

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Figure 1
"The devil was in the grocery store yesterday . . ." Photograph courtesy of the Collections of the Library of Congress.

     The first year of graduate school, it was the questions
that woke me every night at 3 a.m. When will they
     figure out I'm an impostor, and I can't do the work?
How do I deal with the students in my own class?
      What can I do over the summer for money?

Insomnia, at least, made it easier to keep up with all the reading.

     When spring semester ended, the temp agency assigned me
to a medical supply factory. They wore space suits
     and hoodies in the sterile sections. This part of the factory's clean,
that part's hard
I was told the first thing on the first day.
     Those aren't really opposites I suggested.
Maybe not, but don't wear that gear outside this airlock.
      Otherwise, you have to re-gown.
[End Page 71]

     I was sent to the ostomy line where I filled in for the girl on maternity leave.
The line always ran mandatory overtime. The curse:
     the line was up and running by 5 a.m. each day. The blessing: my insomnia,
cured. We took lunch at 10:40 a.m. It took me two weeks
     to remember not to start talking when I first sat down because Glenda liked
to pray before we ate. Lord, reach down and anoint this food
      so we may be better servants of your son.
Wednesdays were full of promise
as we scanned the sale papers together, noting for each other
     Chicken legs's 29 cent a pound and It's half price pork chops at the Food Lion.

     Renata liked to keep us updated on her diet and her battle with diabetes.
The devil was in the grocery store yesterday trying to lure
      me to sin. I told him, "You get back in that box of Pop-Tarts, Mr. Devil.
You ain't getting to my sugar this week."
Eula confirmed,
     it can happen that way. He calls your name, girl, you got to resist.
That's it,
said Renata. That's it indeed.

     We had cake (Good Bye, Good Luck) the day I left, summer over,
grad school beginning again. Don't ever come back here
     they insisted. Stay in school, finish what you've started, it's what
we should have done.
They believed in education, as they believed the Lord
     reached down and touched their food daily,
as they believed the devil connived to tempt innocents in snack aisles.
     I swallowed my cake and prayed I could continue
to work clean, live hard, sleep well.

Tanya Olson lives in Durham and teaches at Vance-Granville Community College. She holds an M.A. in Anglo-Irish Literature from University College, Dublin, and a Ph.D. in twentieth-century British Literature from unc-Greensboro. Her work has been published in the Cairn, Bad Subjects, Main Street Rag, the Raleigh News and Observer, Elysian Fields, and the Independent Weekly, among others. She coordinates the durham3 reading series, is a member of the Black Socks poetry group, and serves on the board of Carolina Wren Press.

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