Hard Work

by Kashawn Taylor

The water cooler
looks mighty different
these days: chilly

lidless steel seat,
walls just over my waist, doors
a thin swinging censor
bar, so gazes meet and fleet;
aromas comingle circumspectly
to show proper respect to those
already working, a wafting
coterie of fetidness, eau de
effluvium, before clocking
in for a new day of hard work.

My colleagues rotate monthly,
turnover rate egregious like the sounds
which reverberate and ricochet
like bullets in a bank vault
off these shared walls and harass
my nose. Was that a duck,
or a raspberry, a machine gun?
I did not ask to be killed
or fucked today.
That they leave so quickly,
like summer winds, does not impede
company progress – we lumber
on, but they always come back,
bloodshot eyes, missing teeth
exploded capillaries, ethanol breath.

Shame lives here
no longer, only running
showers and whooshing toilets,
a noxious humidity coating my skin
and not least of all,
a gut-wrenching sense of hot urgency
stabbing my bowels which screams
You’re well past the deadline!
Please, evacuate!

My concentration wavers.
Not emails or micromanagers,
but loquacious coworkers
a gossamer palaver fusillade
forces my intestines into turtle torpidity
as we race toward shared goals.

God, grant me
a crumb of comfort,
some scruples of peace, a
semblance of solitude
as beads of salty sweat
– or maybe they’re tears –
sting my eyes, dot my thighs
and splash into the toilet bowl.

KASHAWN TAYLOR has been published recently by Prison Journalism Project, The Blotter Magazine, Querencia Press, Evening Street Review’s DIY Prison Project, and the Indiana Review. The first chapter of Taylor’s memoir, Violent Offender, an account of his experience as a Black, queer, educated first-timer in prison was published by Oyster River Pages. Taylor has poetry forthcoming in the inaugural issue of Beyond Bars, Emergent Literary, and Poetry Magazine. Taylor’s contribution to Union Spring is included in subhuman, forthcoming from Wayfarer Books, March 2025.