Working Girls

There'll always be working people in my poems because I grew up with them, and I am a poet of memory.  (Philip Levine)

 

Lines

For Manon, wherever I may find her

The shop floor foreman hasn’t got a clue

to where the new employee’s coming from –

the incense and the ice of Xanadu,

the flame and fury of Byzantium.

He knows for sure she doesn’t give a shit

about the piecework in her packing crate –

she checks the clock; at five, she’s first to split.

It’s no damn wonder that she can’t make rate.

He’s noticed, too, the woman can be seen

each morning, scribbling in a steno pad,

an island in the boisterous canteen.

Whatever’s eating her, she’s got it bad.

He’s right. Her day job’s pretty hard to take
with grace and grit; and she won’t last too long,
demanding honey-dew on coffee break;
for no good reason, bursting into song.

 

(by Catherine Chandler -- originally published in Umbrella, Fall 2007)