Where All His Time Was Spent

Allen, Jason

doi:10.1215/15476715-3921224

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JOURNAL ARTICLE

Where All His Time Was Spent

Jason Allen

JASON ALLEN’s work has appeared in Passages North, Oregon Literary Review, Contemporary American Voices, Cream City Review, Ragazine, and many other venues. His novel, Gin Lane, was a semifinalist for the James Jones First Novel Fellowship, and his poetry collection, A Meditation on Fire, was published in 2016.

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Labor (2017) 14 (3): 5-6.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1215/15476715-3921224

Published:

September 01 2017

Pop sanded and stained hardwood floors

until his spine revolted, until the chemicals

had seeped into his bloodstream and cracked

his calloused hands. Because of his bulging

bags of dust, because of all those years of steering

those monstrous motors, with their punishing

decibels like a thousand rawhide belts

whipping at once against the boards,

because his work had induced

a constant ringing in his eardrums,

that same tinnitus as Van Gogh,

I could never work quite hard enough

even though I rode my bike at midnight

at twelve years old, to return from the scalding

plates and sauce pots, garbage cans and mops

of that Italian restaurant, even after years of carrying

bag after bag of Portland cement and flats of asphalt

shingles on my shoulder, even as I honored him

with a burning back and stooping gait—

his suffering...

2017

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