NYC #4

Max St. Jacque's photography has been featured at BRIC Gallery, Usagi NY Project Gallery, J. Mane Online Gallery, Glen Echo Photoworks, Las Laguna Art Gallery, Gallery 1313, Praxis Gallery, Remote Gallery, Colors of Humanity Art Gallery and Light Space and Time Art Gallery. Their work has also been featured inBeyond Words Literary Magazine, Lunch Break Zine, Up North Literary Magazine and inStone Soup Magazine.

Night Shift

by Rohan Buettel

It’s a bitch to use a jackleg drill,
the percussive pounding of the steel bit
grinding into a concrete wall,
the worker fighting roll and pitch and yaw.
Bleed too much air into the leg and the thrust
can cause the bit to lose its place and drag
you up the face or slide sideways and fall
to the tracks below. The operator needs
the stamina and physical strength to keep
it steady, strength I never possessed.
I worked the night shift one Uni break,
drilling holes in the walls and ceiling
of a railway tunnel, to be pumped with concrete
and strengthened before the floor was lowered
for electrification. The tinnitus I suffer
since then, I put down to the first night,
head close to pneumatic pumping pistons,
no ear protection provided until our complaints
brought results the following shift.
There’s nothing like a job in construction
to give a nerdy type the motivation
to get the qualification
for a desk job.