Larry Smith

A Work Story

            “A good man is hard to find.”

Work shows up one day

red faced with lunch pail

and takes a seat at the bar.

I ask, “What’ll you have?” And he,

“What you need done?”

Four days later the new kitchen is finished

shining chrome and real tile floor.

I tell him he can have free drinks

for as long as he lives, and he laughs,

says, “Hey, the job ain’t done.”

When I get home that night,

Work is sitting on the porch

and says, “I’ve come for that drink

and to sleep with your wife.”

I laugh, but he doesn’t.

He’s fixed the porch now

and put in a new furnace,

while I just drive the kids to school

and sleep on the couch. This weekend

he and Grace are heading to Vegas.

Larry Smith is a poet, fiction writer, critic and biographer of Kenneth Patchen and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. He taught at Firelands College of Bowling  Green State University for 35 years and founded Bottom Dog Press which he serves as editor-publisher. A native of Appalachia's Ohio Valley, he and his wife Ann live along the shores of Lake Erie in Huron, Ohio.