The final section of Pratt’s collection calls on us to transcend our economic predicaments. One molecule/ in the many, carried along toward the purpose of our day.” The collection also documents a more personal story of losing a job and looking for a new one with an appropriately titled succession of poems: “Getting a Pink Slip” is followed by “Laid Off,” “The Unemployment Office” and “Looking for Work.” In “Standing in the Elevator,” Pratt even manages to recast what normally might feel like drudgery as a kind of celebration: “Jobless, I thought I’d never hear/ our Niagara of sound going up the stairs again, never step,/ immersed, into tens of thousands rushing to work. The poem “Breakfast” portrays the nonstop movements of rush hour: “short-order cooks lob breakfast/ sandwiches, silverfoil softballs, up and down the line.” Customers speak quickly and “the cashier’s hands never stop.” The poem ends with the image of a man eating: “his work boots powdered with cement dust like snow that never melts.” In Pratt’s frame, we suddenly see the work being done everywhere through portraits of workers: the flight attendant, the call center worker, the tollbooth attendant, the manicurist, the farmer. The best of INDY Week’s fiercely independent journalism about the Triangle delivered straight to your inbox.
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