January 2026
Poetry
Three Poems
By Sean Thomas Dougherty
The Machinist
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.
Nightshift at the ER
The shift begins with the scent of blood.
A man arrives with a wound that won’t close. Light
flickers in the hallway like a dying bulb. His name
is whispered by the nurse who’s forgotten sleep.
She’s been here twelve hours, humming a song
to keep the ghosts away. There’s always a song.
The janitor mops the floor, singing a song
his mother taught him after her last blood
test. He says she died in this wing. Sleep
never comes easy when you’ve seen the light
leave someone’s eyes. He doesn’t say her name
anymore. It hurts too much to speak her name.
The doctor calls for vitals, repeats the name
of a child in trauma. Someone hums a song
in the breakroom, trying not to weep. Noise
spills from the vending machine. Blood
pressure spikes. The monitor beeps. Sleep
is a myth here. No one believes in sleep.
Outside, the city pretends to sleep.
Inside, we stitch the broken, call their name
when they forget it. We clean the blood
from their faces. We sing
to the dying. There is no silence. The light
is harsh. But it’s all we have to hold them.
Sean Thomas Dougherty
Erie, PA, USA
Sean Thomas Dougherty’s (he, him) most recent book is Death Prefers the Minor Keys from BOA Editions. His book The Second O of Sorrow (BOA) won the Housatonic Book Award and was cowinner of the Paterson Poetry Prize. He works as a Medtech and Carer along Lake Erie.
Website:
For the Ones Who Are Never Written
The man in the corner lifts his hands
to mop the floor. No one knows his name,
but they call “hey you.” He does the labor
no one wants. He hums a half-broken song
as he wipes the blood from the floor. The song
is older than the building, older than the song
his mother sang while folding sheets at the motel.
His shoulders hear her voice, her labor
without a day to rest, her smock stained with light.
She smelled of soap & bleach.
He watches the nurse chart vitals. Her work
is endless. She hums a different desire,
one she learned from her daughter, whose name
is stitched into her scrubs. Her hands
are tired but kind. She moves through the harsh light.
She’s learned to live inside this labor.
The janitor mops, whistles while he labors.
The same song plays in the breakroom
where an aid sleeps with her hands
folded like a prayer beneath her face.