November 9, 2020

Jackleen Holton

THE HUNTER

Every week there was a new defensive tactic
added to the handbook, and we catalogued
and passed them around like recipes

while Manager Dave waited in the back of the house
by the walk-in refrigerator. Everybody’s ass
got groped or grazed. In those days we called it

an occupational hazard. But the tips were better
than anywhere else this side of stripping
so no one wanted to leave if they could help it

unless they left for good, for Hollywood
or Happiness. Cover me, we’d say
when we had to go into the pantry or the freezer.

We pulled the new girls aside,
gave them the lowdown. We went out
to smoke in pairs, even if we didn’t smoke.

On the back dock on one such night, Orion
loomed above, larger than I’d ever seen it, every stud
in the hunter’s belt ablaze. The other waitress,

I forget her name, talked and blew smoke
rings into the sky as I beheld the tapestry,
each bright stitch, and everything else fell away:

my day-to-day despair, Manager Dave, the heavy door
he tried to trap me behind. For a moment I sensed
a world beyond that one: the desert city, its merciless

string of waitressing jobs, the not-quite-men it offered up
like crushed beer cans, F-150 trucks and dirty jokes
washed up on a shore the moon had long abandoned.

I tell you this because that night I knew
a peace I’ve forgotten too many times, though it laps
at my ankles tonight like this cold tide

that seems to cast us backward as it recedes.
And I wonder how the stars so long ago, blinking
out their ancient code, could have known

to deliver me to this shore, this quiet night, and to you,
our feet sand-blackened, a latticework of clouds,
the bright hunter’s moon moving through.

from Rattle #69, Fall 2020
Tribute to Service Workers

__________

Jackleen Holton: “I put myself through college waiting tables, and have fallen back into it a few times when I was feeling less than enthusiastic about my career options. I was good at it, but not as good at managing the stress I caused myself in doing it. What I didn’t realize, at least in the early days, is the spiritual value of service, of discarding one’s self-importance for a time to give to others. I’ve since discovered that all work is service work.” (web)

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November 5, 2020

Atar J. Hadari

LETTER FROM HOME ABOUT A FRIEND’S BUSINESS WITH SOFAS

Your friend is very much enjoying 
the business of the sofas,
says he’s feeling quite content and wishes now 
he’d started earlier,
doesn’t long to be a mercenary
tracking through the jungle
looking for the main artery
traveled by the rebel column—
he gets up at seven thirty,
washes, buys his eggs
and bacon at the local cafe,
reads his newspaper, debates
European policy with builder’s mates who grate
bits of bread across their plate
like sandpaper to get up all the grease.
In the shop by nine-fifteen, 
he unlocks the locked crate,
lifts the noisy polythene
and stamps on the air freight,
lifts the sofa from its precious
nesting foil, an egg,
and props the jungle velour pattern
on the batik matting platform 
with the matching louver bays.
Lunch break. Watches telly;
seventeen-all for darts.
Quick one at the local boozer
—mustn’t smell pissed for the shop;
back out at the customer desk,
three to three-fifteen,
only two hours, watches traffic
slow outside the window to the old classic new routine:
first, the shuffle of the schoolboy
loitering home tugging up his pants;
next the swagger of the aimless
lout with pennies to spare
and no job weighing down his hands;
next, the nanny—back from playschool,
bringing home the bairns,
then the man, cap down forehead,
stumbling to the pub for tea-time trembler, “Haddock’s end.”
Darkness. And the raindrops
hit the pane like small jets
crashing on a still, white tarmac
in the midst of the unexplored, roaring veld.

from Rattle #69, Fall 2020
Tribute to Service Workers

__________

Atar J. Hadari: “My first job where I was left in charge of anything was a pizza counter, which lasted over a year, though this poem is about my best friend’s business selling sofas direct to the public.”

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November 4, 2020

Maria Guzman

RIDING THE B-LINE

I remember the small yield of Marcuses
cases and cases of the same
men we picked those ripe winters
in front of the barbershop, the mall, the internet,
anywhere, they were particularly vulnerable.

Back when we were virgins
drunk off Carlo Rossi sangrias
we’d say, I’ll take a Marcus with that.
We could mean a baby or a dog
or some other sobering charm
like one Marcus who sold mixtapes
out of an electric blue Honda Civic
and ciphers out of a heart-shaped jacuzzi
that never amounted to any gold
except a long line of tired baby mommas
who never did like us after the baby shower.

How we showed up,
for the men they loved,
young and outlined in spandex
dangling silicone pacifiers
stuffed in glitter pink tissue.
How we could never be just one of the guys.

Because we were down for whatever
they’d invite us to telly parties at the Super 8.
So we’d go and never have sex.
Because we knew and they knew we knew
no good can come from motel lighting.
Not a baby, not a dog, not even a Marcus.

from Rattle #69, Fall 2020
Tribute to Service Workers

__________

Maria Guzman: “Over the past fifteen years, I’ve worked in the service industry as a receptionist, barista, spa attendant, restaurant hostess, and retail clerk. These jobs have taught me so much about the idea of shame, pride, and identity, and how all work is essential. As the daughter of immigrant parents, the idea of respecting workers is deeply engrained in my ethos and absolutely bleeds into my poetry.” (web)

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November 2, 2020

Joshua Gottlieb-Miller

STARING AT THE LAKE WITH MY WIFE AFTER MY MORNING SHIFT

What happened? Lauren asked.
I’d started at this branch
a little over a year before,
spent three months revising my expectations
downward until the holidays. Since then it was a marriage
of convenience, me and the grocery store.

If only she’d chosen the other cashier, I said,
quiet. We lived in a one-bedroom on Lake Monona,
downhill from the capitol. When it had been too cold
to snow we would wake up to a horizon of glittering ice,
marvel at how we had learned to live so well
with so little. Now summer lay light on the lake.

She asked for plastic bags. I’d already bagged everything
in paper, I guess I took too long so she clarified
she used them for her dogs. “As a chew toy?”
I asked. And maybe I really was confused,
I don’t know, because of the way she said it,
the subtlety with which she refused to articulate
stooping to pick up dog poop.

Lauren sat silent, looking out at the sailors,
drinking her one cup of coffee,
the one she’d saved until I got home.
You know I don’t think that was even it.
She told me she used “our” bags
because they were biodegradable. “They aren’t,”
I corrected her. “A manager told me so,” she said,
and I explained that the manager was wrong.

I pulled the yellow complaint from my pocket.
I didn’t mention I’d been too late to my register
for one truly gorgeous sunrise, through abundant
street-facing windows its reflection
illuminating competing stores’ displays,
while we were unloading the truck driven
all night to our isthmus, how we worked
through three dawns: twilight, the rays the sun
shot over the horizon, sun breaking the plane.
I didn’t want to admit
I’d pitied this 10 a.m. shopper,
she didn’t know what she’d missed. I could have
just given her plastic bags, more than she asked for,
and in a thousand years they’d disappear.

from Rattle #69, Fall 2020
Tribute to Service Workers

__________

Joshua Gottlieb-Miller: “I worked three different stints at Trader Joe’s, where the poem included here was inspired. I’ve always been an abstract thinker of a poet, and the grocery store grounded me in the textures and mundanity of every day. After my last stint at Trader Joe’s, I started a project where I recorded the coworkers quoted in these poems reading aloud the poems they were quoted in, and then I interviewed them about their lives. Many of the poems I wrote at the grocery store were informed by my sense of visibility or invisibility, and of course, during this pandemic, grocery store workers are both hyper-visible—recognized as essential—without always being seen as individuals. More recently, I’ve found myself in a service position at The Menil Collection, greeting visitors. I am, in writing this note, shocked to discover I’ve been writing and revising poems about the grocery store for a decade now.”

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October 30, 2020

Claire Donzelli

PROMOTION

I came to love the way our store
Was filled with the scent of waffle cones.
Is it silly?
That working at an ice cream shop
Somehow made me feel less alone.

On those summer nights
When the line of customers stretched down the block,
I cheered inside while my co-workers groaned.

I didn’t miss the sense of dread
When my report card came home.
Or the grating thoughts inside my head
When relatives asked, where are you going to college?
Oh. When are you going back?

Scooping ice cream was my meditation,
Work became my mind’s vacation
And, to my surprise, a minimum wage job
Was stronger than any medication

But still, they’d always ask,
When are you going back?

But I was making people happy, and I didn’t want to leave.
I got employee of the month,
I scooped ice cream at lightning speed,
My co-workers were my family, my team,
So really, what more could I need?

Then the weather changed.
The steady stream of customers became a trickle
There were cut-backs, and I saw my co-workers little.

The district manager came one day
After an interview, he said
You deserve a promotion and a raise.
You’re assistant manager material.

When I turned him down, he said,
School’s overrated.
If you change your mind, come back.
You can always work here instead.

As tempting as his offer was,
I knew it was time for me to move on.
Because working at an ice cream shop
Showed me I had what it takes all along.

from Rattle #69, Fall 2020
Tribute to Service Workers

__________

Claire Donzelli: “The years I worked as a baker, sales associate, and bridal stylist taught me so much about myself and the many ways, big and small, we can have a positive impact on others. I went from being a shy sales associate who was scared to say hello to customers to having the top conversion rate and being able to handle three bridal styling appointments at once. I currently study songwriting at Berklee College of Music, where my songwriting and poetry continues to be influenced by journeys, self-discovery, and everyday situations.”

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October 28, 2020

Marylisa DeDomenicis

EXCUSE ME

Again, today, the chef says
to the new bus boy: Load this up.
The dishwasher door hangs open.
The chef says: Not by hand.
This is faster. But the bus boy
looks lost, just stands. I tell the cook:
He doesn’t understand just as the boss
walks in, demands: Go! Get the pan
from the dining room, shoves him
toward it. But the young boy can’t grasp
the command without Romero who works
the kitchen translating lunch slips
into sandwiches and English into Spanish
for his friend, whom all the workers call
The Mexican. When his wife calls
they hand him the phone from a distance.
Then? They wash the phone after him.
Head down, he looks at no one.
Go tell the Mexican we need more
silverware. Go. Tell the Mexican: change
the trash. Finally, when every worker
gathers all at one time in the kitchen,
I ask the bus boy’s friend, Romero:
What is his name? I say, Say it out loud.
We write it out on a paper placemat:
es-EEDRO, and hang it on the wall.
Now everyone knows. They say Icidro,
take out the trash. Icidro we need you
to sweep. And Icidro looks up, speaks
his first English phrase as he passes by,
smiles, whispers: ’Scuse me. ’Scuse me.

from Rattle #69, Fall 2020
Tribute to Service Workers

__________

Marylisa DeDomenicis: “I paid for college while raising my son and working as a server in various restaurants and bars, and as a banquet worker in the Atlantic City casinos while attending school. After taking a two-year reprieve to have brain surgery, I returned to school and received a BA in Humanities. I taught at a local ‘marginalized’ school. When it closed six years later, my husband and I opened a restaurant in a small rural town a bit farther away from the cities. As a poet, this has informed my work in ways that have broadened my insights, increased my compassion for others, and most importantly, I feel, made me a better person. I only hope to make the world a better place. I don’t want to shout, but I will if I have to.”

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October 26, 2020

Lewis Crawford

GRANDDADDY (FOR NANA)

A black, plastic comb in a plaid shirt pocket
tucked beside a pack of cigarettes
and a Harley Davidson Zippo.
That’s how I remember you. 
If you asked anybody else,
at least anyone that knew you,
what do you think they’d say?
Do you think your wife …
I mean, your ex-wife,
do you think she remembers 
that time you pressed your heel against her stomach
until the baby was hanging halfway out of her?

Or the car ride that followed
where you told her she fell,
insisted she fell,
and made her 
say it back to you
as she cupped the head of the child,
my mother,
between her legs?

Does she remember what you said when she lost
her grip and everything inside of her 
spilled into the floorboard? Don’t move
or I swear to God I’ll slam on these brakes
and send you flyin’.

from Rattle #69, Fall 2020
Tribute to Service Workers

__________

Lewis Crawford: “Growing up dirt poor in Georgia, it seems like everyone in my family has worked for either the food service or some other form of customer care. Personally, I spent six years selling cars at a dealership called Mike Bell Chevrolet where, instead of pushing two-dollar cheeseburgers, I sold used Corvettes and made small talk with the townsfolk. Though much of my work revolves around the complicated relationship I have with my grandfather and grandmother, I try to keep most of it in a simple, working-class vernacular, because that’s what I was raised on.”

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