We sat in your kitchen – you
the boss of my partner, married to
a grain elevator operator – and spoke
of gas prices and working conditions.
With an oak desk and university
insurance, you weren’t scared
for your teeth. I just lost my
funding for the second year, resigned
myself back to the rail yards
that run from Chicago to deep
in the ocean. We were drinking organic
herbal tea, the kind with the metallic
taste. This room could have been
my tuition to a state school, but it’s an ill
fitting suit. These ‘middle class’ sleeves
are too long, too quickly taking
all the oil from my skin. To answer you,
I claim my communist roots. Your family
works under you, under a salary. Why
is it so hard to say mine works
under trucks, under fear of losing
the malnourished pension they made?
You stared at me, not as a fellow
traveler, but someone who would steal
light bulbs. You don’t see what I see,
that light belongs to each of us.

–Dan Nowak,
Of a Bed Frame (2011)
Accents Publishing

Dan Nowak’s first book, Recycle Suburbia, won the 2007 Quercus Review Poetry Series Award. He also has a chapbook, Burning the Arson Dictionary: Poems for Thomas McGrath published by RockSaw Press. Dan is co-founder and co-editor of Imaginary Friend Press and an editor for New Sins Press. Dan lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and enjoys that Lakefront Brewery is less than a mile from his home.