Knowing your place
Putting the labels on things
in the factory is his least favourite job;
he hates the way the glue
sticks on his fingers for days after,
but he doesn’t mind stacking boxes.
It’s boring but he likes the neatness
of putting things in their place,
the bar codes and serial numbers
on each one clicking like a key
in a door. The edges of the boxes
line up perfectly and reach up
from the dust of the floor so the forklift
eases them into place with nothing more
than a little hiss. He still remembers
the ten months before finishing school
when things didn’t fit together
so well, when the blunt ends of his bad marks
and his awkwardness and loneliness
had tripped him up. He still can’t say
how he got through it, just that the blackness
finally sat up and crept away one day.
Maybe there’s more to it – the way he wrestled
life back, though it whispered death
over and over to him, but the knife’s edge of his past
slips silently under another box
and lifts it high up, where no one can read
its label or give it a name.
Other poems by Shen