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Peggy Smith Duke is a retired human resources professional and has published in newspapers, professional journals, and magazines for 30 years. Her poetry has appeared in Subtropics, Southern Hum, Main Street Rag, and elsewhere.
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Published Spring 2007
 
Strike
Four months on strike and the company brings out
the A-team. Burly jocks in blue security uniforms
fire up chain saws, cut down hedges for clear sight lines,
take their places at the gates just inside the picketers,
hands folded at their gig line, parade rest.
The first day, we slow down the scabs with a solid
picket line. Day two, the company clears the gates
using half-hearted, union-sympathizing Metro police.
Sixteen weeks: Felicia Viradamo pushes off a car
in feigned injury; a contract worker is fired
for having a rifle in his truck. We spend three weeks
in court for company violations and get our butts
handed to us when Soots has no video. The letter
comes. If I am not back on the job by Monday,
I don't have a job. I am not locked out. There is work.
Collectors are calling. It will be winter soon.
Yard mowing jobs dry up. School is starting.
I can't buy pee-wee football uniforms.
For the first time, I'm thinking about food stamps.
Mortgage payment will be late, even with help
from the union strike fund. Collectors are calling.
I have had this job eleven years.
I say settle. |
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MR BOOKS
Critics at Work
ed. Jeffrey J. Williams.
Critics at Work offers a guided tour through the central, sometimes confusing and frequently controversial developments in contemporary literary and cultural criticism. The tour guides, however, are not distant observers but have been primary participants in those developments, and they report on theory, cultural studies, the literary canon, the recent focus on race, sexuality, and other identities, the state of the univerisity, and the role of the intellectual. Throughout, they consider the not always easy negotiation of politics and culture.
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