Making Garage Doors by John Davis

Making Garage Doors

Tell me I wasn’t lowered down to scoop up
buckets of sperm oil, muck among blood
and guts, blurred by tendons and waxy knobs
of bones. Might as well have been swallowed

in the boom of blubber gouging for oil in that
factory—belly of the beast, making garage doors.
Slivers in our fingers, Rodney and I pounded

our mallets—those harpoons we gripped daily.
Might as well have bashed in skulls of whales
the way we pounded mutts into rails

panels into rails more panels more rails.
Might as well have worn oilskins hitched
to our thin bellies, legs sunk into long tombs

so the doors would unfold effortlessly, remote
control so she could back out her BMW, turn
into the glared dimension of the world
sunlight on the garage door smooth as oil.

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John Davis is the author of Gigs, Guard the Dead and The Reservist. His work has appeared in DMQ Review, Iron Horse Literary Review and Terrain.org. He lives on an island in the Salish Sea and performs in several bands.