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Pink Slip For a Generation
At the 5:00 whistle
When the sunset in late November
Is less light and more molten
Like a blast-furnace window
Glowing above the highway home
Goo spilling from its sparkling ladle
Bent
At the off-ramp’s arthritic elbow
The city smolders
Under
The backs and braces of its groaning bridges
Like a half smoked cigarette
Crushed under the heel of a boot
An entire city is snuffed out.
The Man, my father, comes to this setting sun
As a welder
Flipping down his black mask
For his last day at work
With stars still tracing cross his eyes
And his factory-floor poems loose in his head
Like nuts and bolts rattling in his toolbox.
His visiting grandchildren
Sent from the Coasts for Thanksgiving
Clung like empty holsters to his massive thighs
May someday think Grandpa, what did you do with your life?
He wants to kill them
Kill them all
Lick his pink slip like a Christmas card envelope
And hang himself
With a drill
Still
Plugged into his whining hand
But on his last day home
With smokestacks steaming like gray volcanoes
The sunset remains wondrous to him
The Makar the Creator
He envisions a flower molded from bronze
Bloomed and shaped from his callused hands.
Copyright ©
Robert Trezise Jr.
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