Avram Kline
Poetry
Avram Kline lives in New York with his wife and son. His poems, stories, and essays can be found in jubilat, PANK, Fence, Big Big Wednesday, Transom Journal, The Common, Juked, and Spoke Too Soon, among other places, and his chapbook, City, is available through Permafrost. He’s a member of the Clinton Hill Dominoes Collective, and a regular presence at Sunday tournaments on his block.
Labor
My secret month is visible to birds.
I brandish new plates without
telling my roofer, who knows
the bird tapping my soffits
and the baby bat. I hear plans
to startle me, a young voice
in the leaves, Werner Herzog
issuing a PSA on texting at the
wheel. I’ve texted at the wheel,
grazed a boy darting in cleats
across Route 9. From my porch
I assess the fields, then ask my
roofer if he admires men
who take the time. Stupid
appropriation of a sweet saying,
he says. Labor is for the birds.
I brandish new plates without
telling my roofer, who knows
the bird tapping my soffits
and the baby bat. I hear plans
to startle me, a young voice
in the leaves, Werner Herzog
issuing a PSA on texting at the
wheel. I’ve texted at the wheel,
grazed a boy darting in cleats
across Route 9. From my porch
I assess the fields, then ask my
roofer if he admires men
who take the time. Stupid
appropriation of a sweet saying,
he says. Labor is for the birds.
“ A midcareer sabbatical brought me from city to pastoral farmhouse a few years ago. The ‘I’ in this poem is generating from its electrical porch. ”
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