Art that opens conversation...
from It’s a Good Thing I’m Not Macho (1984)
Wiretalk
Working three floors apart
two mechanics
at either end of a pipe
feed and pull in meter,
keeping time
through a morse code of yanks and tugs:
fingertips
against the vocal chords of wire.
Hanging In, Solo
(So What's It Like To Be the Only Female on the Job?)
On the sunshine rainbow days
womanhood
clothes me in a fuchsia velour jumpsuit
and crowns me with a diamond hardhat.
I flare my peacock feathers
and fly through the day's work.
Trombones sizzle
as my drill glides through cement walls
through steel beams.
Bundles of pipe rise through the air
at the tilt
of my thumb.
Everything I do
is perfect.
The female of the species
advances 10 spaces and
takes an extra turn.
On the mudcold-gray-no-
sun-in-a-week days womanhood
weighs me down in colorless arctic fatigues
hands me an empty survival kit
and binds my head in an iron hardhat
three sizes too small.
I burrow myself mole-like into my work, but
my tampax leaks
my diamond-tip bit burns out after one hole
my offsets are backwards
all of my measurements are wrong.
At each mistake, a shrill siren
alerts all tradesmen on the job
to come laugh at me.
Everything I do
must be redone.
The female of the species
loses her next turn
and picks a penalty card.
On most days, those
partly sunny days that bridge
the rainbow sunshine days and the mudcold-
gray days
womanhood outfits me
in a flannel shirt and jeans
and hands me a hardhat just like
everyone else's. I go about my work
like a giraffe foraging the high branches:
stretching myself comfortably.
As I hang lighting fixtures and make splices
I sing to myself and tell myself stories.
Everything I do
is competent enough.
The female of the species
advances 1 space
and awaits her next turn.
Selected Poetry
Not Macho
All poems copyright Susan Eisenberg.
