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Glen Clark

Smoke Break Poem


1.


When a fist

to the time clock

and the hours in between

became nothing more

than the tedium of hauling

objects from A to B,

he began to measure

the day in cigarettes.


Twenty per shift.


2.


Burning time

between yellowed fingertips,

he spends a three smoke break

blue hooded and freezing

outside of Marion "Community".


Leaning ear to palm.

Pretending interest in patterns

of orange specks of bleach stains

on blue uniformed pants

and occasionally picking at a callous

until plans for freedom found

waiting three hundred miles away

are extinguished into the ashtray

and its time to work again.


Only seventeen more to go.



[Index]

Thunder Sandwich #26 - Summer/Fall 2005