John Grey

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Penumbra, Poetry Salzburg Review and Hollins Critic. Latest books, “Leaves On Pages” and “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Lana Turner and International Poetry Review.

JOB MARKET

No more evidence is needed than the shuttered factory,
the padlocked gates, deadpan windows,
overlooked by fancy mansions on the hills beyond.

Manufacturing outsourced –
another name for corporate vandalism –
but the bosses keep a door open to the laid-off workers –
they have lawns and gardens to tend.

Guys in t-shirts and shorts smell the greed in the air
but rake and dig, sow and prune,
in the heat of summer, plow in winter’s dead.
Nothing constant, nothing guaranteed,
just a roll out of bed in the chill of early morning
down to the employment agency,
for the scraps that’s a day’s hard work.

It’s intermittent,
doesn’t go smooth like machinery did.