from "Be Recorder" by Carmen Giménez Smith

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend August 1, 2019   from Be Recorder   Carmen Giménez Smith

after Pedro Pietri's "Puerto Rican Obituary"   they work their fingers to the soul their bones to their marrow they toil in blankness inside the dead yellow rectangle of warehouse windows work fingers to knots of fires the young the ancients the boneless the broken the warehouse does too to the bone of the good bones of the building every splinter spoken for she works to the centrifuge of time the calendar a thorn into the sole dollar of working without pause work their mortal coils into frayed threads until just tatter they worked their bones to the soul until there was no soul left to send worked until they were dead gone to heaven or back home for the dream to have USA without USA to export USA to the parts under the leather sole of the boss they work in dreams of working under less than ideal conditions instead of just not ideal conditions work for the shrinking pension and never dental for the illusion of the doctor medicating them for work-related disease until they die leaving no empire only more dreams that their babies should work less who instead work more for less so they continue to work for them and their kin they work balloon payment in the form of a heart attack if only that'll be me someday the hopeless worker said on the thirteenth of never hollering into the canyon of perpetual time four bankruptcies later three-fifths into a life that she had planned on expecting happiness in any form it took excluding the knock-off cubed life she lived in debt working to the millionth of the cent her body cost the machine's owner Yolanda Berta Zoila Chavela Lucia Esperanza Naya Carmela Celia Rocio once worked here their work disappearing into dream-emptied pockets into the landfill of work the work to make their bodies into love for our own            Copyright © 2019 Carmen Giménez Smith. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 1, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets. About This Poem   "I've always loved the music and voice in Pedro Pietri's work, and I wanted to commemorate the important contribution 'Puerto Rican Obituary' has been to contemporary poetry and to me as a poet of color. My hope is that I synthesized what he did with my own music, like a remix as a long poem in my forthcoming book, Be Recorder. I began writing it by reading his poem hundreds of times, then by reimagining his critique of the 'American Dream' in relation to my own mother's experiences in the marketplace. I hope I've done both of them—all of the folks represented in both poems—justice." —Carmen Giménez Smith   Carmen Giménez Smith is the author of six poetry collections, including Be Recorder, forthcoming from Graywolf Press in August 2019. She is a professor of English at Virginia Tech and lives in Blacksburg, Virginia. Photo Credit: Adam Fitzgerald Poetry by Smith   Be Recorder (Graywolf Press, 2019) "St. Joske's" by Deborah Peredez "Steel" by Kwame Dawes "On Gathering Artists" by Alberto Ríos August Guest Editor: Ruth Ellen Kocher   Thanks to Ruth Ellen Kocher, author of Third Voice (Tupelo Press, 2016), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month's weekdays. Read a Q&A with Kocher about her curatorial approach this month and find out more about our guest editors for the year. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038