Work Song after Gina Myers All rest my powers defy. —John Donne Summer falls in false terminus: labor abandons austere measure. Watch a film about sharks and monoliths devouring an ocean tourist by tourist. Work Songs we cover every day until effort’s reassigned or the feather rudders yesterday’s Facetime in the park. Cicada’s hurdy-gurdy (my powers deify), but I didn’t see a dragonfly to lessen the decay or store my body’s rest until the sweat dries and the sea-carved salt from our backs carries back to the reef what Rihanna knows: repeat a word enough & its spiral collapses, incomprehensible, a harvest at noisy dusk offering its unspent labor to the sky. The height of my fight syndrome: broken in drinking glasses, dusted magnets falling behind the fridge three tenements high. To do the work so I can rest the rest & make it (better? make good? or just: to make it). My worth is worth the effort: work work work work work work work work work work mmh mmh mmh mmh mmh wah wah wah wah wah ahhh wah wah wah wah wah waaah A radiant hole I fall into until I labor, I in labor lie —9.7.20 (Labor Day)
—Submitted on 09/26/2022
Andrew K. Peterson is the author of A blue nocturne notebook (Spuyten Duyvil, 2021) and four other collections. In 2017 he was a co-organizer of the Boston Poetry Marathon. He lives near Boston.
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