Disaster Repairs by Shoshauna Shy

My lifeline to food, beer,
a bed, cigarettes
is this foreman at the site
in Boca Raton
after Hurricane Matthew
when he hired me on
without needing a reference,
an address, first name.
Paid me in cash, an
all-around win-win.
So, when I slipped up
at the start of week six,
thought it was sympathy
his drive across town,
the chit-chat in his truck
with a Bill Evans CD
to coat over my shock.
Then he says Good luck here,
brakes at the St. Mary’s ER.
Guess he’d hauled many a joe
to get a finger reattached.
Why I expected he’d keep me
shows I was just plain dumb
considering how I hadn’t
even got the job done.



Shoshauna Shy is the founder of the Poetry Jumps Off the Shelf program. Her poems have recently been published by Poetry South, RockPaperPoem, Write City Magazine, and Pure Slush Books. Her poems have been made into video, produced inside taxi cabs, and even decorated the hind quarters of city buses.