The Workers Wait Out the Tornado

Jack Mayer stood by the conveyor belt
and read the rain’s palm: it’s falling
sideways, he said to the spray on the wall.

Steve Deb walked a beat from the door
to the shelter under a narrow I-beam
and only breathed at each stop.

Matthew Sheets couldn’t stop talking.
He belched out well-spelled laughs
and called everyone a bunch a girls.

No one could find Jason McBane
until they saw him working the lift
with a choreographed calm and fixed eyes.

Burt Davies said he’d like to kill Matthew,
and the rain in his black hair
looked like silver when he said it.

When it was all over, everyone stood out
on the clean, wet dock and one by one,
all said something about the color of the sky.