October 2015
I’ve been teaching at the University of Cincinnati for thirty years, but my first job was working as a bellhop at the Chevy Chase Motor Lodge in Bethesda, Maryland. The hotel still exists as the American Inn on Wisconsin Avenue, but they haven’t had a bell staff for decades. My new book of poems is Sea Level Rising, published by Able Muse Press. My website: http://www.john-drury.com.
Summer Jobs
Three Sonnets
1. Motor Lodge
So this is it, experience, I thought,
lugging tin buckets from the ice machines
to rooms of real adults with cigarettes,
mixed drinks in plastic cups, and proffered coins.
I reached out for their blessings, but the tips
were nothing next to rumpled, unmade beds
at four in the afternoon, women in slips
and men in t-shirts while the TV played.
Down in the laundry room, I counted sheets,
stunned by the musk that vanished in the wash,
and balled up soggy towels that down the chutes
exploded in bins. Before the evening rush,
avid and timid for what I glimpsed at work,
I left, hanging my gold vest on a hook.
2. Drive-In Restaurant
The tipping was so bad, I came in early
to wipe hard mustard off the microphones
and lit-up menus in the parking lot.
Each time I took an order, I forgot
something they had to have: two extra spoons,
a moistened napkin, hot sauce for the chili.
I was the oddball who didn’t speak Persian,
who hadn’t flown the ocean, who hadn’t fought
battles with chains and switchblades in the slums,
who couldn’t balance trays upon his palms,
who hadn’t lost a parent, who hadn’t built
wire traps to capture animals for rations.
After the midnight movie crowd peeled out,
I picked up trash from each damned parking spot.
3. Apartment Complex
“John Slow” they called me, when I worked outdoors,
hauling lawn mowers up a steep incline,
heaving “sod clods” off trucks, buffing the floors
of vacated apartments. By design,
I didn’t hurry undertaking tasks
like weeding the rock garden, scrubbing walls
where mildew blackened, piling up old desks.
It all seeped deeper in my overalls.
They said I looked like Rudolf Valentino
because of my slicked-back hair. Because I was silent?
Sweeping the stairs, I stopped when a piano
echoed above the cool well where dust gathered.
Loafing, the boss said, is your only talent—
while the sod we planted on the hard earth withered.
“Summer Jobs” was first published in The Paris Review (Number 131, Summer 1994) and reprinted in The Disappearing Town (Miami University Press, 2000). On July 27, 2015, the first sonnet, “Motor Lodge,” appeared in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry (Column 540)
So this is it, experience, I thought,
lugging tin buckets from the ice machines
to rooms of real adults with cigarettes,
mixed drinks in plastic cups, and proffered coins.
I reached out for their blessings, but the tips
were nothing next to rumpled, unmade beds
at four in the afternoon, women in slips
and men in t-shirts while the TV played.
Down in the laundry room, I counted sheets,
stunned by the musk that vanished in the wash,
and balled up soggy towels that down the chutes
exploded in bins. Before the evening rush,
avid and timid for what I glimpsed at work,
I left, hanging my gold vest on a hook.
2. Drive-In Restaurant
The tipping was so bad, I came in early
to wipe hard mustard off the microphones
and lit-up menus in the parking lot.
Each time I took an order, I forgot
something they had to have: two extra spoons,
a moistened napkin, hot sauce for the chili.
I was the oddball who didn’t speak Persian,
who hadn’t flown the ocean, who hadn’t fought
battles with chains and switchblades in the slums,
who couldn’t balance trays upon his palms,
who hadn’t lost a parent, who hadn’t built
wire traps to capture animals for rations.
After the midnight movie crowd peeled out,
I picked up trash from each damned parking spot.
3. Apartment Complex
“John Slow” they called me, when I worked outdoors,
hauling lawn mowers up a steep incline,
heaving “sod clods” off trucks, buffing the floors
of vacated apartments. By design,
I didn’t hurry undertaking tasks
like weeding the rock garden, scrubbing walls
where mildew blackened, piling up old desks.
It all seeped deeper in my overalls.
They said I looked like Rudolf Valentino
because of my slicked-back hair. Because I was silent?
Sweeping the stairs, I stopped when a piano
echoed above the cool well where dust gathered.
Loafing, the boss said, is your only talent—
while the sod we planted on the hard earth withered.
“Summer Jobs” was first published in The Paris Review (Number 131, Summer 1994) and reprinted in The Disappearing Town (Miami University Press, 2000). On July 27, 2015, the first sonnet, “Motor Lodge,” appeared in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry (Column 540)
©2015 John Philip Drury