But

REGARDING YOUR APPLICATION FOR MANY IMAGINARY POSITIONS

Regarding your applications for many imaginary positions,
such as Glorious Leader of the Lutheran Jihad,
which you were good enough to explain
would pay no salary and convey no health benefits
or even obligate us to acknowledge you
as a fellow human being, we wish to thank you
for every assurance your tendency
toward unfettered rage was in your past,
and that a movie like A Clockwork Orange
or the good parts of Saving Private Ryan
would give us an idea of how you’d wasted
the best years of your life. All of us
nodded when we saw ourselves in you
and your poignant cries for help
even as we forwarded them to the legal department.
We trust you don’t mind.
We appreciate your seemingly robotic sense
of initiative and attention to detail,
to say nothing of the shockingly candid
photographs of you in bed with your girlfriend,
though we respectfully suggest
there are very few women who enjoy
what the professionally shot set
appears to show you doing,
and further we have reason to believe
you picked her up on Ninth Street
behind that weird carwash
one night when the desperation was too much to bear.
That is why it gives us no pleasure
to say we have found someone else
who best seems to fit our imaginary needs
at this time. Not only do we wish you luck,
we wish you would stop burning effigies across the street.