Workers' Poem (3): Workday Liturgy in B Minor, a Villanelle

January 2024:

When the foreman’s bell shatters the air to ash,

Quivering elbows enter the conveyor’s pulsed refrain.

(A hammer howls, and skin is bent in flash)

Hang the clock that flickers, rush, rash—

Tick, tock—crucify the crucifier chanting his repenting chain,

When the foreman’s bell shatters the air to ash.

Each breath casts a coin rusting, a wound’s own dash,

A prayer of Bessemer, a seraphim’s wing, toppling over toil and strain.

(A hammer howls, and skin is bent in flash)

The wheels squeak hymns to Providence, burn and bash,

Seed Sages in soot, Grow Gods in gloom, harvest in shrine of pain–

When the foreman’s bell shatters the air to ash.

Fingers sharpen like steely lash,

Pushing in, Carving out—a bite of bone from His domain.

(A hammer howls, and skin is bent in flash)

At dusk, the doors unbolt like the deep, dark sash—

And shadows shake and wearers wane.

When the foreman’s bell preaches the air to ash,

A gravel falls, and skin is bent in flash.