Blue Collar Review

Fall 2011

The Blue Collar Review is a quarterly journal of poetry and prose published by Partisan Press. Our mission is to expand and promote a progressive working class vision of culture that inspires us and that moves us forward as a class. The work presented is only a sampling from the magazine. Subscriptions are $15.00 yearly, or $7.00 for a single issue.
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Poetry Samples from the Latest Issue

A Broken Rib Punctured the Lung
When Tom Hanlon died,
crushed flat at 3:25 a.m.
between two steel plates meant to measure
the iron product within, the Corporation
shut down the assembly line at unacceptable fiscal cost.
The plant manager leaned his Ichabod Crane frame

inside the plates and said, "See?
It's safe. It was human error."
Oh. So, Tom killed himself?

Tom had survived Vietnam.
Tom had stuttered. He was a gentle man.
Tom had skin which fell in flakes
because of an American agent called Orange.
Tom always wore long sleeve shirts

even in the index of 130 degree heat
inside factory work summers.
I worked next to Tom Hanlon.
He was my brother. We gave each other gifts
of easier tasks on the assembly line.

When the plant manager leaned inside,
I said, "Fuck you, you . . . you heartless fucker."
It was not my intent to be eloquent,
but true to the memory of Tom.

I stuttered when I cursed.
Call it a sob.

It was not my intent to put myself between
those steel plates ever again.

I went to Tom's funeral. I met his widow.
I met his son. I imagined my own family, and I met

my own absence. A week later,
I looked between those killers, imagining
bad things for my body, the wife,
the three girls and the boy.

Tom used to breathe when he stuttered
He was crushed -- a lung,

an American worker -- by the inhuman
rib of a corporation.

A broken rib punctured the lung.
I lost my job in America
on December 25, 2006.

I can breathe now, Tom.

      Troy Bigelow

Journeys
Journeys like when one is left
alone -- practice for dying: relinquishing
of keys,
last click of an office door, final
clang of a locker at the plant after the
layoffs. Vast urban anacondas of the unemployed
ripple muscular down sidewalks, around corners, under neon,
past decorative awnings, window displays,
black shirted cops
always at the ready.
Blue abandonment of that woman
who worked
on the line since her teens
where: she met her boyfriend, married,
kept house with him, raised three children,
pledged
the flag, was a church regular. She
keeps getting address labels to use in
mail that now will never again
leave that neat, small suburban house,
deftly taken by the bank.

   Gene Grabiner

Lupus in Fabula Speak of the Devil
What ferocious beast roams this land?
      A devastating ideology of the rich.
Voracity of harshness intoned,
      Distortions of biblical text: Vulgar associations of Christ
with violence, references from
     the book of Revelation.
Laws passed: attacks on the social contract.
         Furor toward the black President, now called Anti-Christ

A mean-spirited ideology swells the land
assaulting
   labor, women, poor, workers, immigrants, gays, men of color
            people in far away lands
Fascists, all rasping for national crises
      to eviscerate the Constitution,
allegedly for national security,
raw power,
      machismo
Weimar rears its ugly head
            and the beat goes on

Speak of the Devil . . . Lupus in Fabula

   M.A. Castle

Class Warfare
Class warfare, the Republicrats bellowed
when the protests and occupations began.
But haven't you noticed, this war
has been going on since before we
tore off from England.

Cut health care to those who most
need it. Let infant deaths soar among
mothers who can't pay for doctor
visits. Cut the real wages and raise
the rents and gas prices.

Foreclose on mortgages, letting
whole neighborhoods rot so those
still in their houses live next to meth
labs while abandoned pets starve
under bushes gone wild.

Chain those who can manage to get
into college to debts the size of
elephants to drag behind them
into middle age. Make drugs so costly
folks can't afford to live.

Class warfare? We were born
into it. We eat it for breakfast, we
slurp it for lunch, we dine on it
and sleep in it and die of it years
earlier than the rich.

      Marge Piercy

Banks are Poisons for Money
If our movements are leaderless
because of fear
We need to tell the truth    say
I am afraid of your nuclear weapons
being blasted past dust
I am afraid of your prisons
I am afraid of losing my paycheck
I am afraid that where I live
if I live somewhere
will be barred against me or blasted away
I am afraid that the children of my heart
will be taken off and tortured
I am afraid that if I am not
the little man or the little woman I will be large
if I am not part of the background
of history
I will be here

I am afraid of hunger
I am afraid of pain
I am afraid of the cop's club to my head    the
pepper spray directly in my eyes
naked marches in the rain
they can take everything from you
I am afraid of what
they can give me
I am afraid of what
they can take away

More even than I am afraid of Rulers
I am afraid to lead
Afraid to be one with the small ugly leaders
of the past --
Nigger preacher, Naked diaper man, ugly communist lesbian,
unatural puritan witch
common in their darkyfication
(add your own epithets, Attack the Capital)

If our movements are leaderless     know
we have not yet become ugly enough

If our movements are leaderless
because of fear
so is our immobility led?

At the base of skyscrapers
tent cities glisten
like mushrooms in the rain

Only see that this space is full
and we have left our fear at home
surround it with your own.

     Mary Franke

Days of Rage
"they were fire, indestructible song"
           -- Pablo Neruda

The streets fill with chanting
NO WAR     NO WAR     NO WAR

"Do not befriend the rosy vulture"
Neruda warned    "Tomorrow
it's going to rain blood"

That rain has begun
and now it will not end

drums boom     bullhorns shriek
    No Business As Usual

sirens blare Police

"whose streets" we call
"our streets     our streets"

      R. Yurman

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