Only a cog in a grand machine
I groan      scrape      no oil

to slake my bit routine      I rebel
I rebel      hear me      I rebel below

the turning wheel      all that whirrs
harmony between grease      metal      gear

I am ground      still I grind
into the system’s churn until

we break

Joshua J. Hines

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Joshua J. Hines is working on his MFA at Texas State University. His work has been published in The Opiate, Blue Route, Sequestrum, 0-Dark-Thirty, and The Deadly Writers Patrol. He loves penguins, turtles, tigers and pears.

Artwork: Kawabe Masahisa, Mechanism, 1924

31 Jan This entry was published on January 31, 2022 at 12:02 am and is filed under 49 (January 2022), Current Issue, Poetry. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.