Poetry Magazine
Work
It hides its edges
in speed, it has
no edges. Plus every time
he thinks he knows
it close enough, can discriminate
centripetal force
from what gets sheared
straight off,
direction changes:
through stunned space the blade
snaps back,
turtles into its handle
and starts over spinning
the other way.
All along the chopped-up sidewalk
(the need to keep
breaking what we make
to keep making)
the concrete saw
plunges and resurfaces,
precise as a skull;
it glints against
the small smoke
of its own work.
Source: Poetry (April 2012).
Biography
Nate Klug was born in Minnesota, grew up in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and earned a BA in English at the University of Chicago. In 2010 he was awarded a Ruth Lilly Fellowship by the Poetry Foundation.
Klug is a Master of Divinity student at Yale Divinity School and a candidate for ordained ministry in the United Church of Christ. His poems and reviews have appeared in the Christian Century, Literary Imagination, Poetry, the Yale . . .
Poem Categorization
SUBJECT Activities, Jobs & Working
Poetic Terms Free Verse
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