The Uncelebrated Ceremony of Pants-Factory Fatso
1978
Comb-bound: 70 pp.
Published: 2001
Price: $9.95
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The forty-six poems in this book reveal the "fractured, disoriented soul" the poet became during his years as a factory manager, when frequent business travel forced him to "navigate the unmapped reaches of Catalepsy" and "pray for peace, guidance, delivery," leading him home, "after an eon on the road," to his beloved wife and child.
Factory
From the varnished-hardwood sewing floor
At the base of the active mind's factory,
Stertorous snorts and continuous short roars
Escape through the brain's fenestration
And ventilator ducts draining in the spine.
Frantic machines, handwheels spinning
Like turbulent whirlpools, stitch ideas
With penetrating deliberation, as presser feet
And feed dogs free their designs of wrinkles.
Tensions tighten and release, as nerves vibrate
Like thread sliding through tiny guides,
To the plunging points of double-needle eyes.
Scintillant heat is generated beneath the surface,
Where thoughts fuse and conclusions are tied
Like loops, safe from unraveling persuasions
That would unknot the entire concatenation
In a single slip of the original inspiration.
When each creation is completed and examined
For sizing, fabrication defects, bias shading,
It's ferried to the warehouse, properly placed
By classification, then held on shelves
Lining the mind's distribution center,
To await dissemination. Ceaselessly,
The machines stitch, three shifts a day,
As if their supply could never exceed demand.
