Swing Shift Blues

A poem by Alan Dugan

What is better than leaving a bar

in the middle of the afternoon

besides staying in it or not

having gone into it in the first place

because you had a decent woman to be with?

The air smells particularly fresh

after the stale beer and piss smells.

You can stare up at the whole sky:

it’s blue and white and does not

stare back at you like the bar mirror,

and there’s Whats-‘is-name coming out

right behind you saying, “I don’t

believe it, I don’t believe it: there

he is, staring up at the fucking sky

with his mouth open. Don’t

you realize, you stupid son of a bitch,

that it is a quarter to four

and we have to clock in in

fifteen minutes to go to work?”

So we go to work and do no work

and can even breathe in the Bull’s face

because he’s been into the other bar

that we don’t go to when he’s there.

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Poems in English 

• Two Lovers And A Beachcomber By The Real Sea by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Two Campers In Cloud Country by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Trio Of Love Songs by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• To Eva Descending The Stair by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• To A Jilted Lover by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• Tinker Jack And The Tidy Wives by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• The Trial Of A Man by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• The Tour by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• The Times Are Tidy by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• The Thin People by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• The Swarm by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• The Surgeon At 2 A.M. by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• The Stones by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• The Snowman on the Moor by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• The Sleepers by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• The Shrike by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• The Rival by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• The Ravaged Face by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• The Rabbit Catcher by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
• The Queen’s Complaint by Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath

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