JOT: Shades of Gray

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SPRING 2005

TWENTY-FOUR HOURS: JOT writers on Work & Labor
With oral histories from Chicago workers

This brand-new issue of JOT features:

–Photography by Jason Reblando
–Writing from over 40 JOT writers
–Oral histories collected by Eve Tulbert

Read work from the magazine! For more information on how to receive a copy of the magazine for
$10 or to receive a year of JOT for $25, please call the NWA office at (773) 684-2742

BEING WITHOUT
Stephan Urbanski

A job is like
Being without a shadow.
You aren’t there; dogs walk by
Without a bark, no cause to lift a leg.
Proceeding through the alleys, pushing a wheelbarrow,
Picky neighbors notice the noise, but are heedless of you
Who’s making the noise
Tired of walking the alleys, home for lunch
Where there’s nothing cooking; the dog has his dog food,
The cat his cat food, but you, no longer a son of toil,
Have nothing.
Time will pass with a nap,
But unwanted thoughts swarm into the mind.
Ten Hut! Come To! Merely sweat in the corner of your eye.
Back to the alleys, now populated with kids at play
More purpose and meaning to their play
Than you with your wheelbarrow.
Pushing that wheelbarrow as if up a very long hill,
Pushing, prodding yourself, you have as your destination
One devil of a drop.

TATTOO FROM SCRATCH
Lisa Simons

It’s amazing how many ways you can be creative while locked up in jail. Here’s one way:

I always wanted a tattoo. I was doing county time at the Department of Corrections. Six months. I
was working at the jail, cleaning out the offices, so I went through the garbage and found carbon paper. I also got a newspaper that had special ink and a plastic little bottle, and then I went in my cell. I poured water and burned the newspaper and carbon paper. I put the ashes in the bottle, put in a little water, and stirred it up. Then it came to be ink. I had a safety pin and used thread from the sheets and a pillowcase. Then I made sure I had alcohol pads, which we got from nurses, along with hydrogen peroxide. I cleaned the safety pin and my arm. I had my roommate write my name: LISA. Then I took a thread and wrapped it around the safety pin, dipped the safety pin in the bottle with the ink I’d made, and tattooed my arm. After a while my arm was numb and it didn’t hurt as much. I tattooed over the letters slowly. I stopped. Every day I would make sure I kept it clean. Then, after it healed, I saw that when I used soap and washed it, it wouldn’t come off. I was happy because I did a tattoo from scratch and it worked. I said, “Oh my God, it worked. I did it.”

FOR JEWEL
John Kastholm

The young woman
With the bloody lip
Stands in the doorway

The ELevated hovers over her
Like a screaming pimp

The Payless plastic bag
She twirls by her side
Holds inside
Some secret, some regret
Forgotten innocence

She doesn’t hear
Her child crying
In Gramma’s bed

Praying for her safe return
Asking God to tell her
How much she is loved

Is she wishing
She was someone
Somewhere else

Or just waiting
For the cold
Chicago rain
To stop stinging

MAPS AND ME
Dennis Sook

I have been a…cartographer too, too long. My entire existence is up and down and right and left. Two-dimensional only. Vertical and horizontal. That’s all there is for me. No depth! I have no…third dimension. My life has no…depth! I’ve been at this job too long. Year after year. Everything is…flat. With…lines. And measurements. It’s…two point five inches from Chicago to Memphis. It’s four point two five inches from Chicago to New Orleans. It is that same, precise, exact distance from St. Louis to New York. And then from New York to Los Angeles, California, it is twelve point zero inches. My only living relative…a crazy, bipolar, bisexual sister…called me to say that she’s flying to Poughkeepsie, New York, from where she lives in Portland, Oregon. That’s eleven point seven five inches. Her round trip will be twenty-three point five zero inches…that is if she decides or remembers to return to Portland…Oregon! I see from the newspaper that the President’s parents are driving from Bangor, Maine, to Boston, Massachusetts. That will take them precisely one point zero inches. So, there they are…and here I am. So many folks going so many places. And I’ve never been anywhere. Not even an inch!