Explore Poems: Jobs & Working

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Take the I Out
By Sharon Olds
But I love the I, steel I-beam
that my father sold. They poured the pig iron
into the mold, and it fed out slowly,
a bending jelly in the bath, and it hardened,
Bessemer, blister, crucible, alloy, and he
marketed it, and bought bourbon, and...
Hattie McDaniel Arrives at the Coconut Grove
By Rita Dove
late, in aqua and ermine, gardenias
scaling her left sleeve in a spasm of scent,
her gloves white, her…
The Bug Wrangler
By Mike Doughty
He was jailed for cruelty to insects, and his agent wasn’t answering the phone, so he stayed awake in the cell all night, pictures jumping around his head of the cops and the blowdryer they took as evidence. He used...
Self-Portrait as David Lynch
By David Roderick
I wear a flower in my lapel.
I like the sweetness of its lie in my nose.
A carnation, the fool’s flower,

its heart a wilting empire.
In late-night editing sessions,
I imagine I’m planting flowers

in the sockets of eyes. Whatever helps
me reach our rigor...
A Bird in Bishopswood
By John Tickhill
In a sesone of somere þat souerayne ys of alle,
Þat was þe myry monþ of May when many myrthys spryng,
Þe sonne ys somnore and syre and sendyth tyl vs doun,
And byddyth vs bisy for to be oure bodys for to glade;
Man for to myrth hym in al maner wys,
Bestys for to buske ham on bentys tyl abyde,
Variations on a Black Cinema Treasure: Broken Earth
By Terrance Hayes
Broken Earth
Year of Release: 1939
Running Time: 11 minutes
Cast: Clarence Muse and unidentified boy

I am the sick boy in the shack when the camera opens
On the sunrise and wispy silhouettes of the plow
And the fool mule and my father working a...
Cloud Hands
By Arthur Sze
A woman moves through a Cloud Hands position,
                        holding and rotating

an invisible globe—thud, shattering glass, moan,
                        horn blast—so many

worlds to this world—two men dipnet
                        sockeye salmon

at the mouth of a river—from a rooftop, a seagull
                        squawks and cries;

a woman moves...
A Complaint against Blacksmiths
By Unknown
Swarte smekyd smepes smateryd wyth smoke.
dryue me to deth wyth den of here dyntes.
Swech noys on nyghtes ne herd men neuer.
what knauene cry & clateryng of knockes
þe cammede kongons cryen after col col.
& blowen here bellewys þat al here brayn...
Piers Plowman: Passus 6
By William Langland
‘þis were a wikkede wey but whoso hadde a gyde
þat [myȝte] folwen us ech foot’: þus þis folk hem mened.
Quod Perkyn þe Plowman, ‘By Seint Peter of Rome!
I haue an half acre to erie by þe heiȝe weye;
Hadde I eryed...
I was washing at night out in the yard
By Osip Mandelstam
I was washing at night out in the yard—
the heavens glowing with rough stars.
A star-beam like salt upon an axe,
the water barrel brimful and cold.

A padlock makes the gate secure,
and conscience gives sternness to the earth—
hard to find a standard...
Black Earth
By Osip Mandelstam
Too black, too much indulged, living in clover,
all little withers, all air, all charity,
all crumbling, all massing in a choir—
damp clods of soil, my land and liberty...

With early plowing it is black to blueness,
and unarmed labor here is glorified—
a thousand...
Blue Chore Coat
By Daye Phillippo
I have learned to love turning a bar of soap
     and the calendar’s empty pages in my hands,
soft lather that soothes, feels like ritual, lifts away
     things I don’t need. I have learned to love
the chickens’ ways, the hesitating way they walk
     like...
Undertaker
By Patricia Smith
When a bullet enters the brain, the head explodes.
I can think of no softer warning for the mothers
who sit doubled before my desk,
knotting their smooth brown hands,
and begging, fix my boy, fix my boy.
Here's his high school picture.
And the smirking,...
The Night After You Lose Your Job
By Debora Kuan
You know sleep will dart beyond your grasp. Its edges
crude and merciless. You will clutch at straws,
wandering the cold, peopled rooms of
the Internet, desperate for any fix. A
vapor of faith. An amply paid gig, perhaps,
for simply having an earnest heart...
Resurrection purgatory in the laundromat
By Julia Edwards
Behind me, a man retrieves waterfalls
of coins from a vending machine while
laundry owners fold cloth, hold a crying baby.

I’m across the street from a restaurant
we drove to in the haze of motion meant to
anticipate grief—gallons of water, a burnt

quesadilla. What...
It Was Already Dangerous
By Lauren Whitehead
Working the 2–12 shift Driving home in the shiny dark
under the sleepless moon Curling his car around
suburban back roads Almost every day, pushing
drowsily his nice-enough-to-not-get-pulled-over SUV
Iced coffee sugared and milked into cake It was
already dangerous, diabetic as he is, for...
At the Fish Markets, Banda Aceh
By Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers
Even this early—
the muezzin’s minor cry
just now floating the first notes,
the minarets not yet
lit, the sun a closed hinge—
the men have arrived, unloading
dawn’s plunder & kill
before arranging the tails
with an octave’s precision:
silvery intervals crossing
the wide banana leaves.
Even before the day’s...
Ars Poetica
By Vievee Francis
I keep rifles in the front closet.
Trespassing can be a glance.

A good shot,
I practice with bottles, bull's eyes.

I cross the line where the fence...
American Citizenship
By Wu Sheng
Out here in the sticks
You rarely encounter such genius:
"Come, come, come to Taiwan U
Go, go, go to the US"
Words passed with envy from mouth to mouth
Giving the hometown high hopes

Then I heard you've become an American citizen
You're very busy
With house...
Lifeguard
By Joshua Rivkin
My father is modest. He didn't save hundreds
from drowning. Just a few dozen.
Gathered from the swell, the riptide, rough,
rough waves he carried them ashore.

Half-lit, he tells it again. The storm
against sky, the lifeguard without fear
alone in the water, the crowd
gathered...

p1Blue Chore Coat

p1The Night After You Lose Your Job

p1Resurrection purgatory in the laundromat

p1It Was Already Dangerous

p1At the Fish Markets, Banda Aceh

Blue Chore Coat

The Night After You Lose Your Job

Resurrection purgatory in the laundromat

It Was Already Dangerous

At the Fish Markets, Banda Aceh