Poems in Spoken Word & Slam

the plant lights hum like a held breath,
fluorescent, flickering, faithful to nothing but the grid,
and Marcus clocks in at 10:47 with a lunch pail
that his mother packed and a cough he won't name.
the machines don't care about your back.
the machines don't care about your son's recital.
they just count, and count, and count,
and somewhere a spreadsheet learns his name.

I know a woman named Dolores who folds
the same corner forty years,
and she told me once the trick is not to think
about the corner, think about the paycheck,
think about the way her daughter laughed
at something small last Sunday, hold it
like a coal in your pocket,
warm, burning, warm.

the foreman walks the floor like weather.
you learn to read the barometric pressure
of his boots. some nights it's clear skies.
some nights you keep your head down
and your hands moving and your mouth shut
and your heart a small engine
running on fumes and stubbornness.

they say the city never sleeps.
they mean the city never lets us sleep,
not the ones who pour the coffee at 4 a.m.,
not the ones who drive the bus, who clean the office,
who patch the road while you dream.
we are the pulse under the pavement,
we are the hum in the wire,
we are the ones who keep the lights on
and pay for the light we keep on.

so when the whistle blows
and the sun comes up ugly and orange
over the rail yard,
I walk out with my hands still buzzing
and my chest full of static,
and I don't say thank you
and I don't say amen,
I just breathe the cold air in
like it's the first thing
I ever owned.