'Turning the Indiana Bell', a poem by Zenobia Frost

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Imagine how the light / fell on their desks. / Clerks in rotation / elbowed into the ’30s / with their heated office / coffee unimpeded ...

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Imagine how the light
fell on their desks.
Clerks in rotation
elbowed into the ’30s
with their heated office
coffee unimpeded.

Telephones still rang.
10,000 tons of progress
swung in a month, still
toilets flushed. Lunch
revolved on static gossip
panning Indiana backdrop.

The future comes at you
at fifteen inches to the hour.
The future marks you
for demolition. But
sometimes you’re spun
off-axis, feeling nothing.

Note: In 1930, engineers rotated an eight-storey Indiana Bell office building by 90°, without disrupting 600 employees’ workdays.