Loss of Power
This article originally appeared in Southern Exposure Vol. 13 No. 4, "To Agitate the Dispossessed: On the Road with Ernie Cortes." Find more from that issue here.
The fan’s blade quietly spins to a stop.
The bulb over a full sink fails. All this
happens at once, and a child shouts
“Hey” from the next room, comes
running to a man who is not surprised,
but oddly shocked, at the loss.
A mill worker,
a laid-off doffer in the card room who worked
sixteen hours routinely, he looks up
powerless to change this, and he thinks,
for the first time in his life, of the shape
the .38 would make in his pocket,
how no one would know him far away,
at a small bank in Ellijay
or a liquor store in Hartwell.
But tonight,
when his wife has laid out her tips on the steps,
far short of what Georgia Power wants,
he only walks, hands in his pockets, to the mill,
where he leans his forehead on the warm brick,
placing his palms on the trembling wall, feels
the power work through him like prayer.
For a long time, he stands like this.
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Judson Mitcham
Judson Mitcham teaches psychology at Fort Valley State College, and lives in Macon, Ga. His poems have appeared widely in literary magazines and he has a new work appearing in the Summer, 1985, Georgia Review. (1985)