artwork: ralph murre
A DAY IN OHIO
by
James Reiss
The
painters began work on the house,
wielding
their brushes like wings.
By
noon they took off their caps
and
blotted their brows with tan rags,
then
lit cigarettes by striking wooden
matches
on their boots in long slow arcs.
The
roof took on the color of the sun
as
it broke yolk-like on the weather vane.
They
did not see it splatter.
Bronze
in their five-o’clock shadows,
they
slapped one last gold stroke
and
lowered their scaffold and stretched.
