Work

**The formatting of this poem got messed up when published here on Substack. Still working out some kinks on this platform. You can either listen to me read this piece by pressing play below or if you’re reading on a phone, turn it sideways for correct formatting. If you’re reading on the Substack app it seems that turning sideways does not work, so go with the audio in that case, thanks xo**

Work

I started work as a bottle-blonde, fifteen, selling 
manic panic hair dye and tongue rings in the alley 
beside the Piscataqua River, down back, by the 
tugboats, piles of salt. They called me “Jailbait Jenna” 
as if I’d asked for it - youth - and a fat ass. 
There was no labor, the work was just being there. 
I could stand outside with the Dolphin Striker line 
cooks half the night and watch them hold their lit 
cigarettes to the face of Queen Anne’s lace to see her 
wilt from the inside out for five eighty-five an hour. 
The Striker, the dark, downstairs bar, was where all of 
my fathers friends drank and my friends fathers and 
they’d smoke in the alley too and sometimes we’d 
catch eyes but we were in our other lives and it would 
risk the balance of the universe to say hello. 
The whole block smelled like a grease trap, alongside 
the mud flats at low, the exhaust from the kitchen 
blew, we knew to step off the sidewalk for three 
strides to avoid it, but we’d watch it spit on tourists 
–scared, then smoothing hair, looking, all of a sudden, 
like people. Stinking empathy machine. 
I didn’t find one in New York. I didn’t look, I worked 
for Murder Incorporated, “Murder Inc, this is Jenna” 
I answered the phone all day. Maybe I should say 
some nice thing a thousand times to reroute my 
karma. They gave me two nicknames regarding my 
pale, round body that I will not share. I learned that 
listening could be a cruel act, there, people called 
wanting their demo-tapes heard, their mixtapes heard, 
their voices they wanted to record, music, they’d call 
on their lunch break, they’d call from prison, they 
were all hero poets to me and I didn’t have the heart 
to tell them I was seventeen, I listened, you could say 
I was stealing their time. The best day of work there 
was the blackout when the whole city went dead and 
humming hot. I walked home through fifty eight block 
parties, a shopkeeper gave me a Heineken Dark, 
everyone drunk on nothing to be done, all the parks
were safe and sang with children. In Newburyport, still 
just a young, destructive force, I turned walls to rubble 
for my father to rebuild, then the rituals; tapping together 
the planks of the floor, painting paneled doors, crown 
moulding, the incantation of cursing anything warped. 
This is how you build a home. 
Best job I ever had was Lover’s Brook Farm in the 
cold garage, buzzing lights, blue buckets stacked 
head-high, fifty pounds each of dry beans. Black 
beans, Cannellini, Cranberry, Flageolet, Peregion, 
Marfax, Kidney, Pinto in from the fields and dried in 
the barn. I’d clock in each winter and sit at my 
belt-driven picker and pluck out the rocks, 
clods of dirt, grasshoppers, once, a number four pellet 
I’d shot at a turkey at the edge of the bean field 
that spring. It was heaven, to be told what the work was 
and to do it. 
Best job I ever had in a dream was surrogate to a 
litter of orphaned leverets. I made milk and felt 
the feet of three in my middle. It was heaven –to not
have to be told, our bodies worked like the oldest 
clocks, minds gone, soft and dark as the nest lined 
with the fur I’d plucked from my flank.
What would my dream job be? Concierge to the 
night, maybe, go outside at dusk and let the wine 
breath while I point out all the fine flowers, swelling 
fruit, the newest miracles of the day, cooling, snip a 
few stems for the vase, the salad, have Fanny Howe 
read aloud “A Vision”, which seems to want to be 
bellowed to a bright, but fleeting sky. Or maybe it’d 
be holding a light over a whale-fall so the scientists 
can count their fish and I can see how a body 
becomes a place. 
Today, I touched the dark center of the queen 
annes lace and checked my finger for ashes. The work 
is still just being here, like my first job, but harder. 
Each day an island, work –the bridge to build before I 
cross. Work –to weed the garden, sure, but more to 
see the chicory blue beside black eyed susans. To let 
the dog walk me and remember what my teeth are. To 
let my hair dip into the deep pool of dreams as a 
wick. To feel that I’ve always got a fish on. To 
look up and down at the same time. To know I am 
the widow and the widow-maker. To think about the 
doe on a green, June morning when I’m still months 
away from wanting her. To hold my breath beneath 
the wave of August, crashing. To be the river and the 
bed of rounded river rocks. To clean out my 
grandmother’s glove box. A small compartment of 
practical things, still making sense. To empty it. To 
forget sense. To forget the pulled hairline above 
the ear of the Gilgo Beach killer, to not think about 
his fist-strong cheekbones when I walk in the night. 
Some women make six figures selling photos of the 
hair sprawling down their thighs, I imagine their work 
is explaining. Why not the buyer? Takers take, givers 
give their whole lives. Today, my job is lifting garlic by 
the head, to take all day, to trim the roots, the long, 
slender leaves down to stubs, brushing dirt from delicate 
skin, preparing it for a different world, the work is not 
wanting it to be done. 

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