Jang Guin Lim, Yahoo
I Should Have Been Working but I Wrote This Instead
Noah Berlatsky
We’re always thinking about the miners and their head lamps showing us what’s real
like a hard hat made out of Marx and a lunchbox made of Bob Dylan
in the dark in the shaft in the earth the economists skitter in the walls in the miners
who are in the walls chipping blue-black blood from their elbows
and rising up in the steam shovels grinding and belching on cable news
elbowless bodies roll over each other striking sad sparks the hard hats click together
down the slope into the Wal-Mart parking lot, burying the cars of greeters who aren’t real
and teachers moonlighting as baristas like ghosts in the gross domestic product.
Far above the distant stars drive themselves like Teslas gently exploding
we all look up because we won’t get paid if we look down
necks bend and nod sunflowers shifting on the subway platform
swaying on the subway cars shuffling through the subway doors and into the skyscraper canyons.
It’s not real sunflowers don’t go to work
they don’t wear hard hats they cannot type their drab leaves hang limply they are sorry
only mine owners go to work and possibly Mark Zuckerberg
they work making things out of people like Amazon boxes and slag heaps
they say there is quicksand on the top if you climb there you will be sucked down
into the coal rot and shale clangs in your lungs it hammers out dreams in the barrow
shadows on the wall
it’s not real there are no shadows
the shadows have been pulled down they will be burned for fuel
they will be burned so no one will see them
being useless being useful not working the one real thing.
Noah Berlatsky
We’re always thinking about the miners and their head lamps showing us what’s real
like a hard hat made out of Marx and a lunchbox made of Bob Dylan
in the dark in the shaft in the earth the economists skitter in the walls in the miners
who are in the walls chipping blue-black blood from their elbows
and rising up in the steam shovels grinding and belching on cable news
elbowless bodies roll over each other striking sad sparks the hard hats click together
down the slope into the Wal-Mart parking lot, burying the cars of greeters who aren’t real
and teachers moonlighting as baristas like ghosts in the gross domestic product.
Far above the distant stars drive themselves like Teslas gently exploding
we all look up because we won’t get paid if we look down
necks bend and nod sunflowers shifting on the subway platform
swaying on the subway cars shuffling through the subway doors and into the skyscraper canyons.
It’s not real sunflowers don’t go to work
they don’t wear hard hats they cannot type their drab leaves hang limply they are sorry
only mine owners go to work and possibly Mark Zuckerberg
they work making things out of people like Amazon boxes and slag heaps
they say there is quicksand on the top if you climb there you will be sucked down
into the coal rot and shale clangs in your lungs it hammers out dreams in the barrow
shadows on the wall
it’s not real there are no shadows
the shadows have been pulled down they will be burned for fuel
they will be burned so no one will see them
being useless being useful not working the one real thing.