Pink Slip at Tool & Dye

By Dave Smith b. 1942 Dave Smith

He can only drink tea now, screwed and filed.

She is dead, in metal flecks.

55 years old and look like a bad nail

by God they yanked me out

I can tell you

soon as the hurt come son shut up

it don’t mean nothing

but listen: you got time for a ride?

Habit’s put the glass in his hands, the brown

tasteless tea, slime, and cigarettes.

Every Sunday the same, old dog

fat at his feet.

Ain’t so much me I’m asking for

dog like to get out and piss

think they remember.

Near the main gate of Gary Steel I stop.

The amber light pours out of stacked horizons,

monstrous cranes hang over suburbs.

She think that piss mean something

it don’t mean nothing.

Turning back in the dark, headlights flash

on our faces, bent, light of a woman’s hair.

Source: Cumberland Station (1976)

Biography

Poet, novelist, critic, and editor Dave Smith was born in Portsmouth, Virginia. The first member of his family to graduate from college, Smith received a BA from the University of Virginia, an MA from Southern Illinois University, and a PhD from Ohio University. Smith has published more than a dozen volumes of poetry, including Little Boats, Unsalvaged: Poems 1992–2004 and The Wick of Memory: New and Selected Poems, 1970–2000, . . .

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