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    River Tints and Other Workplace Poems
    River Tints and Other Workplace Poems
    River Tints and Other Workplace Poems
    Ebook193 pages53 minutes

    River Tints and Other Workplace Poems

    By Thomas M. McDade

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    About this ebook

    Eighty-Five poems about work: bookstore, supermarket, restaurant, house painting, landscaping, warehouse and factory labor as well as asphalting, school bus and truck piloting. Observations on the toil of others are also included, boxers and circus performers, for example.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThomas M. McDade
    Release dateDec 10, 2014
    ISBN9781310172151
    River Tints and Other Workplace Poems
    Author

    Thomas M. McDade

    Thomas M. McDade is a seventy-seven-year-old former programmer/analyst residing in Fredericksburg, VA, previously, in CT & RI. He's married, has no kids, and no pets. McDade is a 1973 graduate of Fairfield University. He served two tours of duty in the U.S. Navy. tommmcd2000@yahoo.com

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      Book preview

      River Tints and Other Workplace Poems - Thomas M. McDade

      Title Page & Licensing

      Acknowledgements

      Good Quote

      Poems 1—17

      Poems 18—35

      Poems 36—52

      Poems 53—69

      Poems 70—85

      Title Page and Licensing

      River Tints

      By Thomas M. McDade

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright 2014 Thomas M. McDade

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Return To Contents (Or Scroll Forward or Back)

      Acknowledgements:

      Special thanks to the following publications that have published many of these poems: Angelic Dynamo, Asbestos Boots On Beatnik Feet, Atom Mind, Autocast, Bakunin, Beers, Bars & Breakdowns, Bibliopholis, Blue Collar Review, Boiling River Journal, Bold Print, Breadcrumb Scabs, Catbird Seat, Chance Magazine, Clark Street Review, Coal City Review, Coffeehouse Quarterly, Death Head Grin, Deuce Coupe, Ester Republic, Fifth Gear, Gutter Eloquence, Iodine Magazine, Jack Magazine Kaspahra Raster, League of Laboring Poets, Liquid Paper Press, Malcontent, Mind in Motion, Misfit's Miscellany, Nanny Fanny, Nerve Cowboy, Neologisms, Newsletter Inago, Old City Cool, Pavement Saw, Pawtucket Times, Pikestaff Press, Plastic Tower, Poet’s Podium, Poetpourri, Poetry Fly, Red Owl, Release Magazine, Retail Woes, River Poets Quarterly, Sinatra: . . . but buddy, I'm a kind of poem, Skyline Literary Magazine, Slipstream, Spud Songs, Staplegun, Stymie, The Moon, Thin Coyote, Transcendent Visions, Tripod Cat, Unlikely Stories, Willard & Maple, Working Literary Review

      Return To Contents (Or Scroll Forward or Back)

      Good Quote

      I tried for a while to be an agricultural worker and was hopelessly bored. I would stand around in heaps of manure and sing about the beauty of the work I wasn't doing.

      Theodore Bikel (Courtesy of Brainy Quote)

      Return To Contents (Or Scroll Forward or Back)

      Poems 1-17

      River Tints

      Winter in Providence

      Spring Labor

      Casual Labor

      Chronically Unemployed

      Apex Rubber

      The Ponderosa Kid

      Gravy

      Limits

      Cocktail

      Riff-Raff

      Follow Flo

      The Foreman

      Veteran Tux

      Estimates

      Miss Rhode Island

      Pawtucket, Rhode Island

      Return To Contents (Or Scroll Forward or Back)

      Poems 18-35

      Salad

      Steve Stout

      Janice Drive

      Alaska on Paper

      Tree Balling

      Misplaced

      Geometry

      Tracie and the Beauty Queen

      The End of Holy Trinity

      The Barn

      Dressage

      The Rhymes of Maurice

      Smooth Profession

      Just Splendid

      The Weekend

      Doubling Vacation Pay

      Smoke and Mirrors

      Ma’s

      Return To Contents (Or Scroll Forward or Back)

      Poems 36-52

      Drifter

      The Parking Lot at Westchester County Airport

      A Good Day in August

      Webb’s Bar

      Big Rig Drivers

      Walking at Sixty

      Brick

      The W. C. Williams Memorial Garden

      Convenience Store

      Junipers, Boulder, CO, 1967

      The Kid in Me Age 21

      Love Lost

      A Half Buck

      Uncle Ed Putter

      Directions

      Mill to Mall

      Anaconda American Brass Building

      Return To Contents (Or Scroll Forward or Back)

      Poems 53—69

      Unfortified

      So Long

      Yachts

      Diner Law

      A Hundred Miles of Slack

      Eamon S. Quigley in a Nutshell

      Young Guy Singing Sinatra

      Balling Trees in Star Fields

      Art Appreciation

      Rocco’s Ears

      Weddings

      The Lost Fence

      The High Wire

      By Five A.M.

      Haste

      Strong Coffee

      Arcade

      Return To Contents (Or Scroll Forward or Back)

      Poems 70—85

      News Capsule

      Irrigation

      Retail

      Tin Sin

      Leading Eight Rounds to Four

      City of Cloth

      Cornfield Across Route 152

      Cannonball

      Evidence

      God’s Will

      Motto

      Shock

      Trio Cool

      Tomato Soup

      Tangles

      Hawkweed

      Return To Contents (Or Scroll Forward or Back)

      River Tints

      In high season

      at Lebanon Knitting Mills

      the machines thunder

      like a river working a thaw

      especially on the graveyard shift

      where imagination is the savior

      that quiets instincts yelling sleep.

      On the levees of these heady waters

      a knitter and turner plan

      loading dock adultery.

      A college boy sweeper strums

      folk songs on a pawnshop Gibson

      while lint invades his chewing gum.

      A girl tending bobbins

      juggles names for a kitten

      with extra toes she found

      tangled in purple thread.

      A spinner screams scripture

      that the torrents beat down

      but she’s learning to sign.

      The foreman, wired

      like a puppet

      from wounds in the war

      punches the clock

      for an electrician

      downtown closing a bar.

      He tells a nodding man to nap

      on rolls of warm fabric

      in a canvas basket on wheels.

      The textile dreamer drifts

      on contraband tones lifted

      from formulas

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