Fred Voss
Too Bad There’s no Place for it on my Resumé
Being the only machinist
to have dropped out of the U.C.L.A. Ph.D. program in English literature
the only machinist
I have ever seen who reads Melville
and Dostoevsky and Shakespeare
and Tennessee Williams out in a folding chair on a factory’s gravel parking
lot
at lunch
the only machinist
who admits to reading poetry at all anywhere
or who writes poetry
and would rather gaze at the paintings of Edward Hopper for hours
rather than an NFL game,
I am also
probably the only white machinist
to have ever driven toward work down Cesar Chavez Avenue in East L.A.
and been more proud
of the blue and purple and lime and orange-painted bars
of gates around muffler shops
and the murals of serpents and señoritas in white dresses
and revolutionaries
with ammunition belts crisscrossed across their chests
and the Anthony Quinn library
than I am of my own president
and army
and country full of strip malls and Starbucks.
It’s just another in a long line of accomplishments
in my sterling career.
Page(s) 35-36
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- 10th Muse
- 14
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- Angel Exhaust
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- Blithe Spirit
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- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The