Contributor: John Garmon

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Vacuums whirring their incessant sucking
early in the office mornings
before the people wearing clean clothes
enter and geneflect at their appointed stations
and sit down and begin again their rituals
the many prayers they will pray to make it
to endure another day in the vacuum
where the big meat=eating city sucks
lifeblood from those who are young once
before the machine comes calling
and the priests of profit intone
chants to the gods of gigantic goings
trading trash for treasure and testing
everywhere there is merchandise to be sold
or a new way to exact perfect costs
from what was merely static before
as dust and bits of forgotten paper shreds
on the hard carpet lying in supplication
prostrate for the early vacuums
to clean things up and get the place
in order again for greater gain.


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John Garmon is an assistant in the writing center, College of Southern Nevada. His poems have been in Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Southern Poetry Review, and other journals.