p r e v i o u s | n e x t
Genevieve Wynand
The Fight
During risk and rudeness,
only the sketch of living
in between is the goal.
Both floor and
ceiling are essential —
indoor sustenance.
Workers weary
of going to work,
a daily risk.
Young children
ask for help,
for food.
The lights, hot
grease, sour uniform: They forget
you are a human being.
Left filling orders, forget
you have feelings (sad). Rude,
rude anxiety; sick always below.
Workers are people,
every day, invisible,
taken for granted, kind.
Bellow. Stop.
See each other.
Slow everything down.
(The painstaking effect
of causal ubiquity,
of black and white, exalted.)
Hold our gaze.
See the human
being.
Source & Method
An erasure poem inspired by Margaret Talbot’s ‘Billions Served’ in The New Yorker, November 30, 2020. The words follow their original order. Tense is modified, and plural made, only when the letters required are also available in sequence.
Genevieve Wynand is an editor for Pulp Literature Press, and a writer and poet with work in print and online. Visit her at genevievewynand.com.