piecework

blue-stained fingers
pressing rivets
into denim

a gray-haired woman
sneezing blue
into a tissue

30 hour work week
the foreman resets
the time clock

last day—
a parting gift
of red suspenders

crumbled pink slip—
three weeks and she can still hear
the whistle blow

jobless—
saying grace
over grits

**

a.m.

You can set your clock
by The 2:15,
wailing
like a wounded animal
in the middle of the night.

Dogs lament its passing,
howling
as it fades
on its predestined path.

**

On Momma Exiting the Denim Factory

I don’t know what
made her look straight-up
into the sky,
perhaps it was to allow her eyes
to drink another shade of blue,
or to gaze beyond the limitations
of four gray walls,
having worked
a ten hour shift
seated at a sewing machine
so I could start the school year
in a new pair of blue jeans. . .

. . .but when bird shit landed
in the middle of her forehead
I couldn’t help but laugh,
my adolescent mind,
saturated with reruns
of The Three Stooges,
(nyuk, nyuk, nyuk)
reasoned that a whupping
would somehow be worth it.

I was wrong.