Michael Born's Page

Christina Ferry

Ode to the Print Shop I Had to Leave When I Graduated

Sweetly smelling paper
fresh off the pallet, delivered by truck--
white and white and white
and occasionally black or blue
or yellow or green or orange--
fresh to measure, to cut, to fold,
to mark up, to mar the whiteness of it
with black or blue or green or red--
whatever color you like the best, really,
or whichever one you need--ink.

Pliable ink--whether fresh out of the can
or down on its last legs--
shoveled out by knives,
melting around them
and into the space left behind;
this is a liquid that will end up
everywhere, like it or not,
on machines, on the floor, on the people:
under nails and over fingers, on arms,
bleeding into fabrics, into skin--
succumbing only to blanket wash
wafting the odor of fruit.

And the globs of grease hanging
off every screw, the oil dripping
off chains--the inkstains and staple bits
yet to be cleaned off the floor;
lasers burning designs onto plastic sheets;
hole punchers for all your hole punching needs
whether two holes or three holes or fifteen;
paste pellets--tiny eggs of glue to melt down;
leather shoes to protect your feet;
signatures to fold and fold and fold.

And the math that was not math and is now math
with production costs and press speed variables,
parent and child sheets, in different sizes,
ink costs by percent coverage, and
the novices, all of us, all of us
except the teacher who put up with
questions and late nights and writing
tests, grading papers, grading performances,
when there were jobs to do, to start, to
finish, problems to fix, people to talk to.