Two Poems
David Stephenson
Dog Gauntlet
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When I was young, I worked day labor jobs
through a temp agency. Most notably
I joined the team on a dry-fill machine
at a dog food plant. I grabbed the bags
when they were filled and rotated my way
and ran them through a slot to sew them shut.
My other option was a chicken farm.
They put something in dog food so the smell
will make dogs hungry, but make the taste
unpleasant so that dogs don’t overeat.
That’s the entire theory of dog food.
Since our clothes soaked the smell up, at shift’s end
we walked a narrow chain-link tunnel to
the fenced and razor-wired parking lot
while stray dogs from the downwind part of town
came by to prance and bark and growl at us,
attracted by the tantalizing whiffs
that wafted from us as we trudged along,
and also by the lunch meat plant next door.
You’re often just a piece of meat at work,
but usually it’s not so obvious.
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First published in The Road Not Taken, Spring 2024
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​David’s notes: “I briefly worked at the Ralston-Purina plant in Davenport, Iowa in 1978, through a temp firm called Manpower. The plant was on the same road and rail line as a big Oscar Mayer plant—make of that what you will. In the poem, I promoted myself to working on one of the bag-filling machines, but in reality I did unskilled labor in the warehouse. When dog food sat in the warehouse too long it had to be sent back to the regrind room and reformulated, so my job was to stand in a railroad hopper car with a utility knife and cut open boxes of expired dog food, dumping the dog food in the car and throwing the boxes into a dumpster. By the end of the day I was waist deep. The plant attracted stray dogs, as did Oscar Mayer, so when you exited you were usually greeted by dogs barking from the other side of the security fence. When I came out, stinking of dog chow as I did, it was like dog Santa had come down from the North Pole.“
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Clown at Gas Station
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Last week, at the self-service gas station,
a real orange-haired kid’s birthday party clown
emerged from the car right in front of me
and set the hose, and lit a cigarette,
and stood there taking deep drags as it pumped.
Trailing smoke and staring into space,
his painted face looked drawn and beaten down.
There’s only so much that a clown can give.
I empathize with all who are employed
and tried to picture what might have gone wrong:
kids getting scared and crying the whole time
or kicking him or stomping on his shoes
or potty accidents or vomiting
or a drunk ex-husband showing up
or any kind of problem getting paid...
At length the pump clunked off. He sorted out
the hose and cap, and took a final drag
on his half-finished smoke, and snuffed it out,
and climbed aboard his rig and drove away,
westward, toward the setting sun. Godspeed.
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First published in Avatar Review 24 (2022)
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​David’s notes: “This poem documents an actual event. I was getting gas after work, and a guy in a full clown getup climbed out of the car in front of me, fumbled with the hose for a while, then lit a cigarette while he was pumping gas. He looked really tired and bummed out, like he’d had a rough day. I wonder how he’s doing now.“
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David Stephenson is a retired manufacturing engineer from Detroit, and the editor of Pulsebeat Poetry Journal. His most recent collection is Wall of Sound (Kelsay Books, 2022).
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