Industrial Park America

No one leaves for home who works
at the Industrial Park America:

Middle management sleeps
on desks upon lumbar pillows;
workers make do with boxes
and pallets in a warehouse;
and CEOs practice fleeing
in private jets to test runways.

Who cares whether the laborers
slaving to stuff mattresses
and tweak widgets in foreign
dictatorships lay heads at night?

The top-down office and distribution
services on the job twist arms
and definitions with every engagement.
Water coolers dampen into muddled
voices while phones, printers,
and forklifts chatter for bosses.

Given evening sleep in a furnished house
with opportunity to read and mull,
the body stretched on corrugated cardboard
and Styrofoam popcorn would craft
for community, linger before art.

Rich Murphy’s Meme Measure, a collection of poems, will be published by Wipf and Srock in 2022. His poetry has won The Poetry Prize at Press Americana twice Americana (2013) and The Left Behind (2021) and Gival Press Poetry Prize Voyeur (2008). Space Craft by Wipf and Stock also came out 2021. Books Prophet Voice Now, essays by Common Ground Research Network, and Practitioner Joy, poetry by Wipf and Stock 2020. He has published nine other collections of poetry.