Piecework
        ... just because you don't know what work is.
                        —Philip Levine

It's a way of dealing with
lack of ambition,

a way to close off
the view of the big picture

which always threatens
in that moment between

the dream's closing credits
and the open eye's

claim on your day.
My parents took in piecework

their whole lives
because it was a living.

I do it, too. No novels
for me, with time like

a bolt of navy blue worsted
stretched from one end

to the other. Rather a few
shapely but elastic lines

draped on stanzas as though
on hangars, made to be

taken out and worn on
weekends, and in the right

artificial light, acknowledged
as inevitable, if not perfect.

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Copyright © 2016 Arne Weingart All rights reserved
from The Southeast Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission