Melinda Bufton, Moxie

Winner of the 2019 University of Sydney Helen Anne Bell Poetry Bequest.

The 2019 Helen Anne Bell Poetry Bequest for an unpublished full-length manuscript by a woman poet
was judged by Fiona Hile, Pam Brown, and Kate Lilley.

Acknowledgments
Earlier versions of these poems appeared in Australian Poetry Journal.
The work contained in this publication was supported by an Australian Government Research Training

Program (RTP) Scholarship.
Sources

The titles of the poems on the following pages are taken from chapter headings and sub-headings from
Betty Lehan Harragan’s Games Mother Never TaughtYou: Corporate Gamesmanship for Women
(Warner Books, 1977): 7, 13, 16, 18, 21, 22, 32-37 (inclusive), 40, 42, 44, 60.

First published 2020 by Vagabond Press
www.vagabondpress.net
© Melinda Bufton, 2019
Design and typography by Michael Brennan
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise without
the prior permission of the publisher. The information and views set out in this book are those of the
author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the publisher.
ISBN 978-1-925735-19-2

M O X I EMELINDA BUFTON

VAGABOND PRESS

CONTENTS

Scramble Your Signals to Protect Your Plans ... 7
The Jobless Edit ... 9
Mirror Stage ... 11
Ask Forgiveness Not Permission ... 12
Public Appearances Build Prestige ... 13
Colours are Ambivalent ... 14
Skeleton Key ... 15
Company Policies on Getting Laid ... 16
Fresh Initiative ... 17
Always Collect Your Earned Medallions ... 18
Gold Dust ... 19
Acquisitions (adjusted) ... 20
Face-offs at the Line of Scrimmage ... 21
Office Décor is a Tip-Off ... 22
Webinarre ... 23
New criteria for specified heights ... 24
Teenage Secretaries ... 25
Consultation Period ... 26
What kind of job ... 27
Some Things To Action ... 28
Salary or bust ... 30
Symbolic meanings of windows and walls ... 32
Don’t garble the locality message ... 33
Watch your Timing ... 34
Use High-Power Binoculars, Not a Microscope ... 35
Counter Their Sneak Plays ... 36
‘Scoring’ Is the Broad Connection ... 37
Industria ... 38
The ‘X’ Factor That Can Even The Odds ... 40
In your Spare Time you Climb the Ladder (Competition is the Prize) ... 42
Walking Away From Commercial Rights to Your Name ... 43

The Winners Circle ... 44
Mass Opportunity ... 45
Entrylevel ... 47
You are possible ... 48
Very Process-Driven ... 49
Decision Tree ... 50
Event Management ... 51
Destiny tailgater ... 53
Hotdesk ... 54
Fourth Draft ... 55
Fake it til you make it ... 57
Keep smiling don’t look down ... 58
Pattern Placement ... 59
Would you like to buy a vow? ... 60
Troubleshooter ... 61
Sticky Interface ... 62
Unsolicited Application ... 63
The Room Of One’s Own ... 64
It’s best if you have your own lines ... 66
Potentiality ... 67
Scopeful Dodger ... 68

SCRAMBLE YOUR SIGNALS TO PROTECT YOUR PLANS

Be careful where you place the symbols.
See, that time I went to Art after Dark and
tried on the ambient perfume in the gift shop
I also imbibed quite a lot of the working girl exhibition I’d gone there

for—
with slant intentions—
and purchased a small pair of legs
in brooch form.
It had been a tough year.
My bearings were if not broken
then skewed hellishly close
to hypertension.The breathing under my hillocks
knotty
at best.
If I’d admired the European techno under the stained glass
I would’ve died with pleasure spots encircled round my pupils.
As it was, in buying the small legs
which drew a charming (small picture) of my own legs
all done in porthole nets
meant the brand of Voodoo tights I’d been buying
on repeat for three years
were at that moment being discontinued.
These are the pivots that change our destiny
scenarios. I was to look for alternatives across the summer,
little did I know that I would stop with their daily threads.
The blue jeans cometh.And the sequential pairs of grey Deuce sneakers.
This is the spell that has
undone me.
Now, on the 1st of the 11th of the 17th year
here I come down with heaven’s downpour if heaven were

7

a seamless wraith, trying very hard to smile most of the time.
The technicolour has returned, and the peaches to my cheeks
are only hours away.
So mote it be.

8

THE JOBLESS EDIT

Those were the shoes I bought after my redundancy,
stepping out into the spring sun each day with question marks
scribbled all over my countenance. Perhaps a big one dangling,
precarious overhead.
Every day I wore the same thingos. Rubbery lace shoes.
Grey unyielding jeans.
That same black t-shirt with edges.
There’s no such thing as a maryjane.
There were several ways to un-quash my operations.
How could it be that all that was important just days ago
pfft like a powder puff. Slide into an artist
and yet no smock. Do you still wear dresses? said my friend from work.
When I am blue, I offer offhand.When I need to feel the restrictions

again in order to know how
far I’ve come. Yet this detox will never work. Like food addiction.You

need to eat so you will
never conquer this! My quest to earn was internal and external.There

is a small bag in the bedroom, it’s a plastic bag full of the things you
have brought home from your workspace.
It’s only in the movies that people take out a box with a plant on top.
But also, the ticket to freedom felt wet like angel cake and heavy like
future-call.
There she goes folks, the duality pops again.
Do you remember close to the end, when you attended that meeting with
the PVC—Ms Name-Initial-Name—and you were taken aback at
how mermaid her Italian knit slubby suit was and how charmingly
right her matching nail polish and you lost focus for 1-maybe-two
seconds, she took off marks re your lack of understanding of the
purpose because ‘you used the wrong language.’
I had. I was slipping in my energies. I also believe the

9

comely powers of a heel can heal everything and in that particular meeting
as the dust motes spun along the boardroom table and I wondered at my

gently dangling jelly-knelt future,
in that meeting I was in
flats.
Due to that excited skip I had made down the aisles of the Dan Murphy’s
anticipating the first drink’s first tingling burn
and had torn my monkey muscle in the step-top ball-change,
some days before.
Anterior challenges are not what we expect.

10

MIRROR STAGE

Easy to mock the fax

machine, facsimile was so un-trenched

in desire.The

way we were was inky. Digital platforms

crowd usefully amongst us as we try to say

we are happy for the robots’ arrival.

Meantime the matching project continues.

The rooms have been named for women;

they are brass-plating the legacies on, now, in the corridors of

hell. Come on now. Let’s not pretend it was fun. It was blood sport.

But kinder on the carapace, and with less ignominious

plans, less awakened trysts

and placed atop the cherry icing.

Like cosmic pets they were led into the boardroom

as though a safe container for dreams. Not wrong but not

the fulcrum. I can be glib about

usefulness.

God my restrictions.

I dance through the mentors with nary a breath.

I can’t handle neatness and aplomb in the same room as one another.

You ask me to decorate this document with

enticing remarks. I wallpaper it with quotes I have manufactured regarding

the quality of your ideas.

Meet me at the repurposed timber room divider

I’ll tell you what I know about the plans, amongst the taller aisles. #NSFW

I know nothing about the plans.What plans? Did you hear the new

director

11