poetry notebook

Factories fascinated him. He read management magazines.

He lived in a manufactured world, everything

He touched was mass produced. In a factory.

After the eye was gone, it was time to get a job.

“You can’t do this job with one eye.” said the guy

Who did the hiring. “Give me three days.

If you don’t want me then, I’ll leave and admit it.

I can do the job.”

He had no idea what the job was.

Electronic substrate silk-sceen printing

For digital clocks and watch faces.

Must have been 1975. Digital clocks

And watches just hitting the market.

Slate black chips, electronic circuit

Lines in silver or gold paint on one side

Rows of eights in brighter ink on the other.

“3,000 chips a night.”

Night shift. Squeegee the screen.

Place chip on platen. Step on pedal.

Take chip from platen, carefully –

Don’t smear it. Use a spatula. Put the chip

On the conveyor belt between you

And woman on identical machine

Bakes for a few feet and drops three inches

15 feet away where inspectors

Seek broken lines

Through fluorescent ring around

The magnifying center glass.

Everyone had to produce. Everyone had

To inspect. Rotation. He couldn’t see

Fast enough. Then he noticed.

It’s a pattern. To look for imperfections

Is the long way home. Look instead for

Perfect patterns. Remove imperfect patterns.

Inspecting sped up. Errors ebbed.

But it was the machines. The sound patterns.

The rhythm. He sped the tempo,

To keep from getting bored

And to blot out the radio less

Like music than like someone

Shouting out the time.

The machine fused with him.

He often awoke believing he’d fallen

Asleep at work at the Machine

He could play like a drum kit.

Tempo expansion. Syncopation.

By the time his output hit 12,000 he wanted

To scream. He went to the office.

“I quit.” They said, “We’ll double your pay.”

He said, “Too late, I can’t take it.”

Of course, he just turned around and got a job

In a different factory. Jet airplane filters.

But that is a different story entirely.

And he hadn’t yet learned that there are ways

That are neither numbness nor insanity

To engage with seemingly infinite repetition.