The Office Tower Tales

Alice Major

from The Office Romeo’s Tale

She touches his chest
with a forefinger
that now seems all nail.
Sharp pain rips round
his heart and something’s
going swimmy
with his eyes. Beyond
her shoulder, vines
are sprouting up the wall.
His desk has turned
into the surface of a pond
and frogs are popping
on and off the lily pads
like a squad
of croaking cheerleaders.

I dddon’t think I wwwant to…he stutters
like a calculator with a stuck key.

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Take your next coffee break with these three women…

Join receptionist Aphrodite, Pandora from accounting, and Sheherazad (Sherry) in Public Relations on their coffee breaks from the engineering firm in the Commerce Place office tower. Over a nine-month period that builds toward the Year 2000 and the birth of Pandora’s first granddaughter, Sheherazad tells her friends these seventeen tales which literally halt the hectic march of time and speak to their concerns about growing old, living, loving, and working among urban towers.

Just as the creators of classical myth, The Thousand and One Nights, and The Canterbury Tales presented exemplary stories to inform and delight contemporary audiences, Alice Major has mapped our modern quest for meaning in “an age not so much evil as incoherent.”

“White-collar work…with a twist.” Quill & Quire

“These tales bring to vivid life not only Major’s human subjects, but also their city, in all four seasons. In accomplishing these things, Major also explores a wide range of interrelated topics…weaving numerous threads together with impressive dexterity.” Lesley Peterson, Assistant Professor of English, University of North Carolina

Alice Major emigrated from Scotland at the age of eight, and grew up in Toronto before coming west to work as a weekly newspaper reporter in British Columbia. From 2005–2007 she was appointed the City of Edmonton’s first poet laureate. In 2006, she published The Occupied World with the U of A Press. She lives in Edmonton.

5.25’’ x 9’’ • 264 pages

cuRRents, a Canadian literature series

978-0-88864-502-9 • $24.95 (T) paper

Literature/Poetry/Women’s Studies