Poet’s Choice
2nd Place

—Anonymous, American, ca. 1940, painted and carved wood with metal, Milwaukee Art Museum

Those new electric lights in the barn
gave him another hour or two, with milking done,
to sketch it first on a whitewashed plank.
Then here’s what he built:
six toy men
whittled from bits of the wife’s clothespins,
with copper brads hinging shoulders and hips
that could bend and flex, leaning their tiny backs
into rotary crank and crosscut saw. One guy stands
pulling a treadle, beside another whose arm
must’ve swung a missing hammer or punch.

What made it run? A motor from a broken Singer,
or linkage tied to the stock-tank windmill’s stroke?
I’d almost break museum rules to feel just how
it’s notched and nailed, or test that funny
screen-door hook. Most of all, I want to crank
the rusting bike chain geared to a hidden shaft,
pushing and pulling those paint-daubed workers
back to life.
So that’s work, he might have thought
to himself as it creaked and groaned, his knowing nod
to callous and sinew and everything else that made
him tick. His tribute to toil: an intricate, inescapable
circus act, right up to the empty carousel spinning
on top, and not a boss or dollar bill in sight.

Artist Statement:
I’ve spent time on several occasions enjoying “The World of Work”, an anonymous kinetic sculpture which sits on display, sadly immobile, in the Milwaukee Art Museum’s folk art collection. As a lifelong putterer myself, I couldn’t help conjuring up the imagined circumstances of its design and construction. The sculpture's title indicates to me that the artist had more in mind than a simple whirligig—it also became the title of my poem.