Photo by Artur Tumasjan on Unsplash
“Tell no one,”
the man shouted
into his cellphone,
11 AM flight boarding,
Concourse B, Gate 3.
“This must stay only
between you and me!”
Midway, Chicago.
I caught the gist.
I had the goods,
the lowdown, the skinny,
the whole truth
and nothing but.
I was dangerously
in the know.
And oh, what secrets I had.
This stock will peak
with the full moon.
The set of false IDs
is hidden beneath the socks
and shorts, top left drawer.
The weapons ship out
at midnight, dock in Mobile
a week from Monday.
My mother would kill me
if she knew, but the lingering
sweetness comes
from the half cup
of marionberries mixed
in with the lemon curd.
Tomorrow will be too late -
if you want to stop them,
you know where they are
and what must be done.
Hours later over Michigan’s
snow-filled fields, I vowed silently
that all the secrets were safe with me.
Only the most heinous of tortures
would make me give up the details
and then, only then,
garbled and incomplete,
fabrications, fibs, white lies.
Consider me a bank vault,
a strongbox, a lock with no key,
a random password
with three capital letters, four numbers
and four symbols.
I promise to tell no one.
These lips are sealed.
John Peter Beck is a professor in the labor education program at Michigan State University where he co-directs a program that focuses on labor history and the culture of the workplace, Our Daily Work/Our Daily Lives. His poetry has been published in a number of journals including The Seattle Review, Another Chicago Magazine, The Louisville Review, Passages North and Drunk Monkeys among others.