Not Working
- Not Working
“a man of your experience” they say offering nothing and him laboring forty years
as though to have bread on the table were enough he should sit up and beg for that the bastards
and them so smug, smiling holding out their soft hands as if they knew what hands were for
he knows: not for nothing he’s worked these calluses into his palms, the flesh hard and ungentle
it’s not work he needs but his own name spoken here and thoughts that go down easy and soundless as the beer in this glass
Mary Fell grew up in Worcester, Massachusetts. She now lives in Indiana and teaches writing and literature at Indiana University-East. Her first collection of poetry, The Persistence of Memory, was published in 1983 and selected for the National Poetry Series. She can be reached at mfell@iue.edu.
