Portside

A Dream of Quitting Time

(Part 4 of Sand and Steel)

By David Salner

From break to break, I’ll wish my shift away,

shower off sand, go out into the crystal clear

all-clear of quitting time—midnight in Arizona,

soaring like a nighthawk over Guadalupe,

this town I work in, where Yaqui Indians

have been driven into the corner

of a long-lost nation; sail further

to Apache Junction, home of Nate’s Used Cars

and GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS; to Globe, Morenci,

where copper towns are dying, leaving high-rise dumps

of orange tailings, listless hills of slag;

or down the dried-out Gila River, into a basin

of forgotten lives, where Brandi Riley

says goodbye to Jason Sanchez, a loud kiss,

a silent night in Casa Grande;

or float above a lonesome birds-eye

of saguaros; careen on desert monsoons

almost to the border; to Bisbee, home of the famous

deportation, surrounded by the tufts and brambles

on the otherwise bare-assed Mule Mountains—

I’ll float into the desert night, beneath a firmament of sand,

of countless grains reflecting death foretold,

forever shimmering with ghost-town stars.

David Salner has worked as iron ore miner, steelworker, machinist, bus driver, cab driver, longshoreman, teacher, baseball usher, and librarian. He was a telephone solicitor for 24 hours. His writing appears in recent issues of Threepenny Review, Salmagundi, River Styx, Beloit Poetry Journal, North American Review, Nashville Review, and many other magazines. He is the author of Blue Morning Light (2016, Pond Road Press), which features poems on the paintings of American artist George Bellows.  www.DSalner.wix.com/salner