The Machinist

Sean Thomas Dougherty

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 the dignity of labor:

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

can live in the cracks of calloused 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 women who tasted like blood

and 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.