American Rust
- American Rust
Buried palm to palm beneath floorboardstrapped residue of her forefather’s will smallcowhide gloves burnt orange well-battered
gloves so small she knows she could slipinside them how her hands will reekof sheet metal the upriver trout
for days her fins flail against a greasy fate belowthe yellowed rocks of her fingernails oil squirmsreminding her for years of factory men
weekend walks to the laundromat tangled trash bagsbursting with work clothes the stained glintof beer in glasses clacked with weekday husbands
caught in their sloshing gait of hunger patina of bootfalleach wade slow home in hammy downpickups loosened tool belts each exhale then hard won
now left to her mechanic’s daughter a better lifein her studio the corner kiln fires each day’s work unevenone armful of clay dried to the bone others wet
everlasting some of her work will never drya small rebellion against the modern mouth of automationhumanity whirring on the primacy of a future tense
her hands are wet with the glaze of decadesundying memories overworked so painstakinglygreased in American oil they never truly rust [End Page 141]
Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley, Affrilachian author and Kundiman alum, is the Tickner Writing Fellow and recipient of a Provincetown fawc fellowship. He belongs to the Onondaga Nation of Indigenous Americans in New York. Peep his work from last year in Best New Poets, Boston Review, the Poetry Review, and Tin House, among others. His first book will come out this fall: Not Your Mama’s Melting Pot (Backwaters Press, winner of the Backwaters Prize, selected by Bob Hicok).
