In tenth grade,
I landed my first job
Washing dishes in a May Co.
Basement dinning room
Next to the blemished,
Unsold clothing.

After thirty hours a week,
There wasn’t much time
Left for schoolwork
While reading two
Science fiction/fantasy
Paperbacks a day.

The broken dishes were still alive
When I pulled them apart
To drop into the garbage disposal
So I could listen to china
Being turned back into grains of sand.

I cut myself on the left hand
With an empty,
cracked custard bowl.
That gash
Was the Mindanao Trench
Pumping blood.
Without warning, the doctor
Poured alcohol into the open wound
And scrubbed it with
A hard bristle brush.
Four stitches pulled it together.
Being an economy job,
There was no pain relief.

After hours,
There were water fights
With amusement
Rides through the
Dry steaming cavity of
The dishwashing machine.

At midnight,
Before clocking out
Apple pies vanished
Into adolescent bellies.

The geezer that scrubbed the pots
Lived in a different world
On the other side of the kitchen.

He slept on sidewalks
With a bottle of Thunderbird
For a wife.
His skin cracked without warning
And no blood
Giving rise to rumors that
He was the walking dead.
In his first life he had
Waded through a mile of surf
At Guadalcanal
Where ten thousand Marines died
Before reaching the beach.

The cooks said he
Ate nails, bolts and screws
For breakfast
He looked
Like he weighed ninety pounds,
But was closer to two hundred
From the metal.

Three years at one twenty-five an hour
Taught me more about life
Than all the homework in the world.