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Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper
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- At sixteen, I worked after high school hours
- at a printing plant
- that manufactured legal pads:
- Yellow paper stacked seven feet high
- and leaning
- as I slipped cardboard
- between the pages,
- then brushed red glue
- up and down the stack.
- No gloves: fingertips required
- for the perfection of paper,
- smoothing the exact rectangle.
- Sluggish by 9 PM, the hands
- would slide along suddenly sharp paper,
- and gather slits thinner than the crevices
- of the skin, hidden.
- Then the glue would sting,
- hands oozing
- till both palms burned
- at the punchclock.
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- Ten years later, in law school,
- I
knew that every legal pad
- was glued with the sting of hidden cuts,
- that every open lawbook
- was a pair of hands
- upturned and burning.
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from
City of
Coughing and Dead Radiators
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