Breaks
by Michael McFee[audio:http://shanendoah.wpenginepowered.com/612/files/2011/08/Breaks.mp3.mp3|titles=Breaks]
Work was something we did between breaks,
those fifteen-minute vacations twice a shift
when we stopped stomping the wide foot pedals
that sent our massive machines into their cycles
of bending or pressing or welding or trimmingthe steel pipes that required quick human hands to position and turn and lift and package themin that long-gone auto parts plant in Arden. We’d hustle down the narrow concrete aislesto a low room under the bosses’ platform where the machines we really wanted to touchwere waiting, humming quietly, glowing— the ones that wouldn’t slice or crush our fingers,the ones that gave us drinks and snacks and smokes in exchange for the warm coins in our pockets,the silver circles dirtied by our touch. Lunch was a longer breather halfway homewhen most of us drifted outside to eat, away from the heat and din and oily stink,but it was the other breaks that kept us going: those quarter-hours included our walking timeto and from that official Concession Area, even if it took seven minutes each wayand only left us sixty frantic seconds to gulp a coke and choke down a few nabsand take some puffs on a fresh cigarette before grinding it out and heading backto our distant stations in that factory, fueled for the next few hours of doingthe same job our mindless bodies always did, resuming the manufacture of tailpipesdesigned to fit under machines like the ones we drove to work that and every other day,already looking forward to our first break.
