Ink Factory
Hanson at the ink factory all day on a line
looking at bottles of blue ink, black
and red ink, thought of a toilet bowl factory,
a doorknob factory, a sign factory,
signs such as “Get this over quick”
and “It never gets any better than this.”
He thought of a factory of wire elephants
and giraffes, and factories with everything
taken out: shelves, pallets, hydraulic lifts.
Emptiness factories: here’s emptiness:
empty boxes, empty shelves.
The wire elephants and giraffes have risen,
have been packed and sent to Siberia.
He thought of his sister-in-law Ethel
getting acquainted with Nancy at a bar,
“I make paste and put the paste in jars.
Kids in schools cut out trees, clouds,
picket fences they paste on paper.
The good cut outs get tacked
to walls.” He thought of a tack factory
and a factory for industrial slings.
James and Miss Q
I was seven, a second grade failure.
James Wilson and Miss Q
were rolling around on the floor.
Fast, quiet, a turbulent, human brew.
James, in the back, gets up from his desk,
his head a glazed melon, hair like weeds,
puffed cheeks, puffy eyes like slits.
He pulls from his dungarees
back pocket a grimy, folded paper
he doesn’t open, crude
penciled numbers or alphabet letters.
All I know, it’s his homework. Miss Q,
up front, says, Give me that mess.
In her blond perm, hourglass shape born
for a business suit she means business.
It happens quickly, their storm.
Light through windows falls on zigzag desk
rows. They roll on the floor in the room,
scuffle, over smudged asterisks
or Bs and Cs he’d struggled to form.
- © Peter Mladinic 2022
Peter Mladinic’s fourth book of poems, Knives on a Table is available from Better Than Starbucks Publications. An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico, USA.
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