if you remain in your car
all you can see
is the breakwater.
ragged chunks of concrete
pieces of rebar jutting out
like mummified fingers.
Lake Michigan lays there
a dead ocean
indistinguishable from
its mortuary slab.
smell the embalming fluid,
a noxious mixture
of detergent and petroleum
byproducts pumped in
by the refinery and
the surrounding mills.
after climbing the breakwater
and finding a smooth boulder
of concrete to perch on
I watch the February storm
approach from the northeast.
the sky and sea seem
to merge creating a
seamless shirt of the world.
ten years gone
and nothing really changes.
Chicago still glimmers to
the west;
the distillation towers
of Amoco refinery sulks
in the east.
and all I ever succeeded
in doing this last decade
was killing time.
I murdered ten years
so cleanly
I didn't leave so much
as a witness.
we walk down the aisle
to the front of the factory
having been called by
THE VOICE
on the intercom.
here it comes, we whisper,
the rumored end.
what we expected
but never truly prepared for.
once we're gathered,
the supervisor reads names
off a clipboard.
I watch friends slough off
from the group
like flakes of dead skin
drifting into the breakroom,
many holding to the hope
they still belong
to the factory work force.
when a bare skeleton crew remains,
the supervisor informs us
we still have our jobs,
report to first shift
Monday morning.
still employed...
after twelve years
I get to cling to this job
I despise.
and there's a break room
teeming with people
in love with the tedium
of factory labor.
folks faced with the prospect
of having to search
for another job
just like this job,
a job that likely
doesn't currently exist
in this area
in this economy.
I need to keep reminding myself
I'm one of the lucky.
and maybe I'll begin
to believe this.
continual employment
day after day
after week,
years put in
with only
years to look forward to.
trying to convince myself
this constitutes luck.
that I'm better off
than the poor bastards
walking out the front door
for the last time.
go home, the little voice
in the pit of my stomach
tells me.
go home to your mobile mansion
and the twenty one years
remaining on the mortgage.
go home and look at your children
nestled in the illusory bosom
of financial security.
then come back here
Monday morning
with a big fucking smile on your face.
mom's brains omeleted across
the breakfast table
body slouched in the chair
her head an empty cereal bowl
the gun's in my hand
with the sense memory
of a pulled trigger
and mom's dead
somehow it all ties in together
and I'm the knot
I sit in the chair across
I take the phone and dial 911
and tell them what I've done
mother's blood seeps
into my shirt and jeans
wets my back and ass
I think how many times
we've sat at this table
me and her against the world
how she'd do anything for me
work two jobs so that
Christmas wouldn't be lacking
and then I think how
she was before I shot her
how she wouldn't piss
down my throat if my
guts were on fire
well, my guts are on fire
and all I needed
was twenty dollars
to ease the inferno inside me
twenty fucking dollars
to get me to the end of the day
and just thinking about it
gets me angry all over again
and I tell the cops
when they come for me
better come armed
and loaded for bear
Karl Koweski is a writer strategically placed atop the second highest mountain in Alabama. He still thinks the Cubbies will win the World Series this year, or any year. His column "Observations of a Dumb Polack" is featured at ZygoteInMyCoffee.com. His latest chapbooks are Industrial Strip at Covert Press and Diminishing Returns at sunnyoutside.