The foreman says we’re lucky to have light

at all. The fuse blew again. We set up

by instinct in the dark, by the ghost of a song

we once danced to in a bar called Love

Don’t Live Here Anymore.

My father taught me a yearning for labor:

how to find beauty in a drill-press, how light

can live in the cracks of callused hands.

He was a quiet man. He never said “I love

you,” but he taught me a minor tune

about a welder who married his flame

through temp jobs, graveyard shifts, work

that breaks the back but not the wages.

I’ve kissed men who tasted like blood

& cigarettes, who traced maps on my back

with fingers that knew the language of scars.

There’s a boardwalk gypsy who said my palms

read like no one’s ever done me good,

that I was married to the machinery’s noise.