I Saw Work and Didn’t Like It By Cole McInerney
I Saw Work and Didn’t Like It
When my brother goes to work
at Marineland in 2005, he gets
battered by the shift manager
and slips on a wet floor spot. He gets
a miniature wooden boat figurine
from the gift shop for it. I think
the beluga whale is the largest
thing to ever exist, doing laps
in the blue tank whirlpool.
A showman sits a dolphin on his
lap and sings “Happy Birthday” to himself.
I see you can feed the whales little circular
fish, so I do, and they feel like snowballs
in my hand. You can read a bible
on the bench, and people are
ignoring the tricks. There’s a beach
with plastic sand. When I run my hands
through it, they come out with an orange tint
and orange smell. When my brother
quits after slipping on the same spot
a second time, he laughs it off
and the crowd that came off the tour bus
laughs too, at the dolphins balancing beach
balls on their nose. He takes me home
on the city bus we wait an hour for, saying
he is going to rob the casino to never work
another day. I hope he does so I don’t have to
either.
About the Author
Cole McInerney is a poet from Niagara Falls, Ontario. His poems have appeared in White Wall Review, Echolocation Magazine, South Florida Poetry Journal, and Contemporary Verse 2.