Envelope
Those soiled rubber bands lay in wait around
my thinning wrist. They now sag, strained by
the third hour of toil. I await the ever expanding
pile of envelopes like a convict awaiting the feel
of grass under hardened feet.
The machine jams up once more, as the machinist
wipes the sweat from his grit covered brow. I avoid any
form of eye contact whilst he mumbles his hangover
drenched soliloquies. My feet slip in the puddles of
oil that gather at the machine’s rusted feet.
The rest of the faces on the shop-floor remain pensive,
the skeletal shadows of the iron balcony loom above. It
always threatens to collapse, to finally merge with each body
here within this building’s ever enclosing walls; I stopped
counting any cash I made hours ago.
And again the cogs begin to turn, my dizziness now
stable, as the streams of unmatched junk mail once
again start their smirking march across the conveyer
belt. I match numbers to addresses, addresses to numbers,
and the clock hands still haven’t moved an inch.
Jonathan Butcher has had poetry appear in various print and online publications including: Popshot, Elbow Room, Belleville Park Pages, Electric Windmill Press, Dead Beats, and others. His second chapbook Broken Slates has been published by Flutter Press.