June 27

by Rachel Kiel

.
on the day that one coworker left and another was reprimanded
the sky opened up like it was weeping, the office politics being
too much for heaven to bear, and all of us bearing them daily

great sheets of rain hit everything looking like suede or leather
when you run your finger across it and it felt like night inside
our carefully constructed embryo of a submarine of a building

people cowered and crept and the machines hummed and feared
for their general safety and the flowers on the desk gave up and
let their petals fall or their stems lean foward like old monks

the coworker who had been reprimanded expressed her wish
for her boyfriend to buy her someday a nice piece of jewelry
and the boss said, what a day
let’s shake it all out for a great july

Musical Contribution: “Television Waltz”

In Their Own Words

“I sing the lead vocal on this recording, which was made at the Rubber Room Studio in Chapel Hill, NC.  It features my friends and bandmates Patrick Dyer-Wolf on guitar and organ, Omar Ruiz-Lopez on viola, and Catherine Steele on acoustic bass. ‘Television Waltz’ will most likely be the title track on my second album, which will be released in the fall of 2011.”

About

Rachel Kiel grew up listening extensively to her parents’ record collection in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  She studied poetry and music at Wesleyan University, and after college worked on farms in Maine and in offices in Boston. Rachel currently lives in Carrboro, NC, where she teaches rhythm tap dancing and plays locally in several bands. She has released one album of original songs, Table Manners, and is working on another, tentatively titled Television Waltz.