Helen Ruggieri
with Smiley Burnet, Gene Autry's sidekick, circa 19 something or other.
She lives in Olean, New York and has had work recently in del sol Review, Minnesota Review, Hawaii Pacific Review (best of the decade issue), Poetry Midwest, and Poemeleon.
She has a chapbook, Glimmer Girls, from Mayapplepress.com.
Visit her web page.
—Back to Work Poetry Contents—
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At Work
I do piping and welding specs,
I think in straight lines,
joints, connections,
types of welds: mig, tig, jig,
binding one thing to the other.
I follow the lines
on blueprints, watching
for illogical jumps, impossible curves,
diameter exploding from 1 inch to 10.
I think,
should there be an elbow here,
an ell, a special weld?
Is it logical that the specs
call for a switch from carbon
to stainless steel?
All day I think of
movement, connections,
my lube systems smoothing it all,
keeping things running
keeping things cool.
I dream the blueprint opens,
the plan of the future,
floats like oil on water.
I rise and file, run back-up,
sort and purge.
Out in the oil fields and refineries
my pipes keep it all running,
my welds hold it all together—
my straight lines over
the curve of the earth.
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