Come on cranes, laced with steel triangles in the sky
hello backhoe, squat force to crush earth flat
& manlift, winch me to the 11th floor with my 100′ bundle
of conduit, my 8 hours & hands to suspend every 10′ stick of it
before my foreman & his yellow pad walk up—
Good morning scrim of silica, everywhere silica
spalled from concrete sanded from the tapers’ mud,
air ever-flecked, lichen green MonoKote like cardboard snow
floating candypink or sunyellow fiberglass—
Come on boomlifts rumbling the perimeter forking sheetrock stacks
to the levels where it shall be stood upright & screwed into walls—
Yes scissor lift half-charged all day to raise your railed platform for my hands
& haste my fractions of inch my 3 PM number to be logged—
Hey Tom hey Lee across the twilight haze your lifts trundle in plastic-caged bulbs the chopsaw din
we have not stopped to piss we get ten minutes at ten the foreman’s name
is Joe barely 24 rides in from white-flight with Mike his boss
in a company truck Mike strides the dim wearing testosterone & dark glasses—
Hands don’t fumble now, heel down on bender hook to shape raceway
in which the colored wires will slide for the print says circuit here
raceway straight as I can hang you Joe & Mike say so many eyes on our work—
come adrenaline at 9 AM blood sugar wondering have I done 30′
the porta-potty two floors away—
So stand cranes, erect as candles on Broadway & MacArthur
for the summoning of 349 new beds each with its door
25 rooms for the unzipping of belly or hip socket
88 for just-formed bodies to squeeze into years we pray will only see two degrees of temperature rise—
Rig at both ends the load, guide it with flaggers
but not for me: I am late for 100′, my runs not plumb or straight enough
one morning Mike Joe will with their boss
walk the floor unhappy with numbers & by lunchtime
my layoff check & Tom’s & someone else’s hand-signed
they will escort my packed tools & shock like bouncers to the down-ramp
But weld beams, raise up pandeck for cabinets of gauze flat screens & wifi free as a frequency
I’ll be gone, like the out-of-luck mini-mall that waited here since Nixon
hints of my tendons will stay to whisper in pipe runs
in dark cramped with duct & cable where the eyes left their stares
above acoustic tiles which are glued-together dust—
& dust I was in the five upon five days hard hat & rattatat
like anyone surrendered to wage & windowless
stepping dusted on clock blink hands climbing fiberglass
in ten year boots my feet on rungs made notes I couldn’t listen to
paystubs in the gray wind waving