Poetry Corner

Overtime
by Jackie Sheeler

The Feldsteins have a colic baby:
she cries all night, can’t eat, can’t sleep

except in snatches – (Mrs. Feldstein breast-
feeds and the wheat she boils for breakfast

sickens her infant. But this is not the point.)
Baby dropped to sleep just ten minutes ago.

Mrs. F, pale with her all-day/all-night
walks and the incessant machinery of rocking,

sprawls on her brown velvet La-Z Boy,
goes out like a light. Minutes later, you

lean on your horn below her window, just
as the signal goes greenóthe tired driver ahead

less alert than he used to be, back
when he didnít have to work a second job.