Photography © Edward S. Gault

 

well-behaved

there’s not a special way
it works:

heads accosted by unusual sun,
the plastered hair, glistening muscles by 12:00 p.m.,
making it
too hot to eat or dig.

and then,

she walks by in shorts.

and no one sweats anymore
or says a word.
just the quick blinking.
unbelievably,
no one makes
an animal sound.
and lunch buckets
are put away
like holy books.

then the sound
of scaffolds
lightly stepped upon,
and rivets driven at a slow
speed. steel beams
fitted
to the tolerance
of a hair and
the whole frame
erected in the
afternoon.

the boss returns
to men sweeping
and folding burlap.
quietly whistling.
polishing steel. coiling
rope.
they greet him. warmly.
ask if he’d like a
daiquiri, shaken, perhaps,
with a tiny umbrella in it.
and he doesn’t say yes or no
but, stands back to admire
the scene: hands on hips,
hardhat pushed back, and
mutters to no one, inaudibly.
“there seems to be a quiet
madness in the
way that they work.”

 

Livio Farallo is co-editor of Slipstream and Professor of Biology at Niagara County Community College in Sanborn, New York. He knows there is very little sound as close to music as the Beatles got it. No one seems to yet understand the danger of AI. Ipso facto.

Edward S. Gault is a poet and fine arts photographer living in Brighton, Massachusetts. His work has appeared in Oddball Magazine, Spectrum, Wilderness House Literary Review, Interlude, Currents, and Encore.