SUPPLY CHAIN > POETRY
Pete Yorn’s musicforthemorningafter
pours from the cracked
window of my hand-
me-down Buick with its one
working door handle.
Speakers crackle I, live
on a chain into the 5 AM
blackness of the interstate
and my coffee. Maybe it’ll work
and I’ll wake up soon. Another
day picking in the aisles. Match
sticker to item, slap it on, throw
it in the cart. Repeat. Clock
out. Take the interstate
an hour back home. Repeat
tomorrow and Wednesday
and the rest of the work
week. Because there’s no
rest for the weary and no
jobs in my hometown
paying above minimum
wage and at least I get
weekends off and am done
before dusk, I tell myself,
avoiding the mass exodus
of 5 o’clock traffic flooding
outward from the city
to the hills and hollers
we call home.
Jessica Cory currently serves as the Editor of Appalachian Studies: A Regional Studies Review and teaches at Appalachian State University. Prior to joining the ranks of higher education, she worked as a gas station clerk, a cocktail waitress, a picker for a large distribution center, an assembly line peon, and many other positions. These experiences and her working class upbringing in the hills of central and southeastern Ohio inspire both her writing and her love of unions.