Igor Sweeney looked you square in the Adam’s Apple if you were one of his underlings.
\nBut when he was ready to sell, he could make Wilt Chamberlain feel like a shrimp.<\/p>\n
For seven months and one day, I observed Sweeney – Iggstoke to his friends –
\nand wondered how, with such a repressed and rotating cast of staff,
\nhe maintained his exemplary self-regard for his publishing exploits.<\/p>\n
Did he not keep his over-worked and over-scrutinized editorial staff
\non compulsory overtime to send out zip-code ordered issues of the magazine
\nthat would arrive, gratis and unbidden, to the reception desks of
\nFortune 500 companies across the city?<\/p>\n
Was he not incapable of working diligently with said staff without,
\nwhen asked a mundane question, bellowing,
\n“I’m trying to concentrate here!”<\/p>\n
My first week, I knew my days were numbered.<\/p>\n
He was patron to none but himself. His wife, a shrew whose younger visage – as well as Igor’s – graced the first page of every issue, Were we in an Inc? Or an Ingsoc?<\/p>\n I marveled, to lesser degree, as I neared completion of the real reason One day after my completion, I received my reward: “Mel – ” Igor Sweeney looked you square in the Adam’s Apple if you were one of his underlings. But when he was ready to sell, he could make Wilt Chamberlain feel like a shrimp. For seven months and one day, I observed Sweeney – Iggstoke to his…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25817"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26074,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25817\/revisions\/26074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThe mag, a sham for deals over which even his comptroller raised an eyebrow,
\ncalled itself the soul of the city.
\nDead souls<\/em>, maybe, you thought as you walked into the gulag of dislodged journalists.<\/p>\n
\nhad a Girl Scout’s expertise in office espionage; this I gleaned when a chance Email
\nbetween myself and my equally incredulous editor
\nreceived a reply in a dialogue in which she’d not been copied, or blind-copied.<\/p>\n
\nfor my being hired: to clean the online archives of the star columnist,
\nwhose indifference to fact checking was equaled to his poor grasp of grammar.
\nMonths of conservative cackling had I cleaned under Sweeney’s hawk accounting.<\/p>\n
\nA summons to the editorial board room, where sat Sweeney and my
\npoor Horatio editor, now powerless to all but his own leave-taking.
\nI sat, knowing what to expect.<\/p>\n
\nAnd, then, I couldn’t help myself. I started laughing.
\nEvery time, he began his Mr. Cleaver pretense, I laughed harder.
\nHe couldn’t even fire me without my rattling his concentration.
\nThen, under his breath, I heard, “This girl is nuts.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"