Worksong [JUN-AUG 2008]

Oh! broken newspaper

ceilings, 4 brown egg omelet

breakfast specials,

three dollars and forty-nine

cents and all day sundays spent

at family laundromats. The eye

of the storm, the surge

of the storm, the severity

of all your beggings and

the wet leaves washed

on the sidewalk in the morning.

Oh! and the bolts

and screws and coffee

cans full of rusting steel

washers, the 9 AM

coffee breaks and the eight hours

a day romanticizing the furtive lives

of alley cats—the claws the fights

the litters of children born

into cinder blocks and well

outside the bounds

of animal matrimony.

Oh! dusty aggregate

of industrial life,

fiberglass planks stacked

neatly outside and inside

all the metal shavings

and oil filters

and the distillates

all read warning

prolonged exposure with skin

may cause irritation

contact a physician

if irritation persists.