tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1797875972831999598.post574012842727768562..comments2023-11-22T04:27:07.521-06:00Comments on glen brown: Labor Daygbrownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13435049339082622611noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1797875972831999598.post-68787089094319506722017-09-04T08:36:47.764-05:002017-09-04T08:36:47.764-05:00Quicksilver by Richard Zabransky
for Glen’s Fathe...Quicksilver by Richard Zabransky<br /><br />for Glen’s Father<br /><br />He anchors it, bare-headed,<br />Hair dense as steel. There must be forty<br />Front-facing men in the photograph--<br />In three rows,<br /><br />Bottom on one knee, elbows cocked.<br />Top balanced on an invisible scaffold.<br />He is dead center. Behind them, a brick wall<br />With a Hopperesque window, dead left,<br /><br />Perhaps the supply building<br />Where meetings are also held.<br />One man’s hand clutches a snotty handkerchief, <br />Or it might be the corner of the flag.<br /><br />All wear their plumbers’ proud indignity,<br />A few prematurely balding or graying<br />Beneath newspaper boy caps,<br />Wide-brimmed fedoras,<br /><br />One in a Brooklyn Dodgers cap,<br />All wide-eyed, some with jutting chins.<br />The foreground is a parched prairie<br />Beneath a sky with the promise of storms.<br /><br />Something brought them together,<br />Some indignity. A plate of spaghetti<br />Their lure, a shared Lucky.<br />A story for the wife or girlfriend.<br /><br />Bragging rights count. <br />They are as real as a goose neck,<br />A drain fitting, or the hot iron<br />That makes the solder run quicksilver<br /><br />Along the joint of copper pipe--<br />A sort of wedlock,<br />Taken for granted, yet a trust endowed<br />To children, the grandmother,<br /><br />The embarrassing Red uncle,<br />Or the wayfaring aunt.<br />The infrastructure of life<br />Should last.<br /><br />But as I said, he is dead center,<br />And like Ahab’s crew,<br />The others lean away from him,<br />Giving him room to spiralize.<br /><br />I have a suspicion he has as much<br />To do with the photograph<br />As shutter or film or tripod.<br />Perhaps more.gbrownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13435049339082622611noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1797875972831999598.post-14571750955803588562017-09-04T08:14:52.237-05:002017-09-04T08:14:52.237-05:00Sweet Will by Philip Levine
The man who stood bes...Sweet Will by Philip Levine<br /><br />The man who stood beside me <br />34 years ago this night fell <br />on to the concrete, oily floor <br />of Detroit Transmission, and we <br />stepped carefully over him until <br />he wakened and went back to his press. <br /><br />It was Friday night, and the others <br />told me that every Friday he drank <br />more than he could hold and fell <br />and he wasn’t any dumber for it <br />so just let him get up at his <br />own sweet will or he’ll hit you. <br /><br />“At his own sweet will,” was just <br />what the old black man said to me, <br />and he smiled the smile of one <br />who is still surprised that dawn <br />graying the cracked and broken windows <br />could start us all to singing in the cold. <br /><br />Stash rose and wiped the back of his head <br />with a crumpled handkerchief and looked <br />at his own blood as though it were <br />dirt and puzzled as to how <br />it got there and then wiped the ends <br />of his fingers carefully one at a time <br /><br />the way the mother wipes the fingers <br />of a sleeping child, and climbed back <br />on his wooden soda-pop case to <br />his punch press and hollered at all <br />of us over the oceanic roar of work, <br />addressing us by our names and nations— <br /><br />“Nigger, Kike, Hunky, River Rat,” <br />but he gave it a tune, an old tune, <br />like “America the Beautiful.” And he danced <br />a little two-step and smiled showing <br />the four stained teeth left in the front <br />and took another suck of cherry brandy. <br /><br />In truth it was no longer Friday, <br />for night had turned to day as it <br />often does for those who are patient, <br />so it was Saturday in the year of ’48 <br />in the very heart of the city of man <br />where your Cadillac cars get manufactured. <br /><br />In truth all those people are dead, <br />they have gone up to heaven singing <br />“Time on My Hands” or “Begin the Beguine,” <br />and the Cadillacs have all gone back <br />to earth, and nothing that we made <br />that night is worth more than me. <br /><br />And in truth I’m not worth a thing <br />what with my feet and my two bad eyes <br />and my one long nose and my breath <br />of old lies and my sad tales of men <br />who let the earth break them back, <br />each one, to dirty blood or bloody dirt. <br /><br />Not worth a thing! Just like it was said <br />at my magic birth when the stars <br />collided and fire fell from great space <br />into great space, and people rose one <br />by one from cold beds to tend a world <br />that runs on and on at its own sweet will.<br /><br />gbrownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13435049339082622611noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1797875972831999598.post-6513155640346664622017-09-04T07:57:19.592-05:002017-09-04T07:57:19.592-05:00The Price in the Eyes by Fred Voss
As I entered t...The Price in the Eyes by Fred Voss<br /><br />As I entered the steel mill at age 23,<br />far more frightening<br />than the slam of the 2-ton drop hammer<br />down onto steel to make the concrete floor quake<br />and the heart jump<br />was the look in the eye of the man<br />who had squatted before it for 34 years,<br />the rage<br />and the humor<br />and the toughness to go on with his trembling jaw<br />and bloodshot eye.<br />Far more frightening<br />than the blast furnace with its white-hot flame<br />turning a ton of steel red-hot<br />as it roared and seared<br />the nostrils and lips<br />was the look in the eye at the man who tended it<br />for 37 years,<br />the pain <br />and the strength and the brutality and the desperation<br />of somehow making it through<br />the noise and the shock waves and the stink and the heat<br />of the steel mill<br />as his hands turned into gnarled claws<br />and his back bent<br />and his fingertips shook.<br />Far more frightening<br />than all the huge machines and cut steel and flame and poundings<br />between tin walls<br />were the eyes<br />of these men<br />who had somehow made it through<br />like I wanted to make it through,<br />who knew so many terrible<br />gut and heart and soul-wrenching secrets<br />I would have to learn.<br />gbrownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13435049339082622611noreply@blogger.com