[Music intro]

LYNNE THOMPSON: Hello! My name is Lynne Thompson, Poet Laureate for the City of Los Angeles and I’m so happy to welcome listeners to this installment of Poems on Air, a podcast supported by the Los Angeles Public Library. Every week, I’ll present the work of poets I admire, poets who you should know, and poets who have made a substantial and inimitable contribution to the art and craft of poetry.

LYNNE THOMPSON: Last week, the selected poem appeared in the online journal Interliq; this week’s contribution to Poems on Air also comes from that same journal in the poem of Henry Morro. A native of Costa Rica, Morro arrived in Los Angeles with his family in 1972. He’s taught in public schools and in prisons and has edited literary anthologies and journals. His work was included in Grand Passion: The Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond (1995) and his most recent collection, The Zoot Suit Files: New and Selected Poems was published in 2020.

LYNNE THOMPSON: Today’s poem is "Any Job" by Henry Morro.

Any Job

The men straggle into the cold warehouse
draped in tattered shirts, torn sweaters,
army jackets, their hats crowned
with logos—NY Yankees, UCLA,
Puerto Rico. Sometimes when they speak
I see gaping holes in their mouths
form the missing teeth.
Sometimes they arrive
in twos and threes—wandering
from warehouse to warehouse like a lost tribe.
Sometimes a son will lead his father
and speak for him, the father standing back,
his eyes open, the son boasting to me,
he can drive anything—give him a shot.
When they fill out the applications
they scribble the reason
for leaving each job:
laid off
temp work only
company moved away
owner died
Sometimes one of them is bold
enough to write fired.
Another one wrote,
fired for fighting,
and for another job he wrote,
fired for drinking with the boss.
Under “Special Skills” they scrawl:
forklift
Spanish
typing
sweeping
I glance out the window
at the downtown skyline.
I know that when I pull down
the Help Wanted sign, still they will keep
shuffling into the warehouses,
hunched in the cold,
gaping holes in their mouths. 

LYNNE THOMPSON: The Los Angeles Poet Laureate was created as a joint program between the City’s Department of Cultural Affairs and the Los Angeles Public Library and this podcast is available wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!

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• Back to Poems on Air: Episode 42



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