by DS Maolalai
they’re worried again, in the office
over forthcoming lawsuits.
a cleaner on a site
fell off cleaning second
floor windows. now
he’s in a hospital
with a leg tied or something
and a head with a crack
and he can’t play piano
or won’t climb a ladder a while.
in the conference office
there are quiet, urgent meetings –
management flocks about trouble
with the wordless choreography
of songbirds on phone-lines
by motorways. clustering knuckles
in the afternoon’s fabric,
drawing and bursting
apart. in passing, the rest of us
make up conversation,
folding our gossip
like origami sheets; cheap gifts
made with unsteady fingers –
you know, says nicola,
he’s an engineer really, by trade,
back over where-ever
he comes from. here though
they’ve struck off
his college or something. it’s two
different countries. there was
something – was it maybe a war?
that’s why he’s just wiping off
windows in building sites,
in places like that
near the motorway.
jesus I tell her.
yeah, she says, jesus –
it’s something that happens
though, sometimes.
DS Maolalai has been nominated nine times for Best of the Net and seven times for the Pushcart Prize. He has released two collections: “Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden” (Encircle Press, 2016) and “Sad Havoc Among the Birds” (Turas Press, 2019). His third collection “Noble Rot” is scheduled for release in April 2022.
