Waste Poem, Or, In Praise of Angels

by Philip Vassallo

Her mother, forty years a factory worker,
die-cutting pelts, riveting eyelets

she calls herself the same in this dying place
wiping the diarrhea and cleaning the bedpans

they come to her like formless hides laid on a conveyor
running to maximize production

cancer-flecked flesh, empty eyes now void of history
in their turn she prepares them for the cadavers

they shall be and without a thought in mind
no attempt at connecting brain to eyes and hands

no obligation to logic or need to explain
she lets what she does speak unblemished

but when they speak, they whisper only to her
head tilted, chin to heart

some call her daughter, others mother,
as the conveyor moves at the rate of her beating heart.

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