George was serenading me as he showered
and had I not ducked in for a wet grab, a warm view
of white suds where his leg hair was curly and thick,
I would not have been first to see three clear words
materializing on the steamed-up mirror:
DAVE LOVES and then my name. I cooed
as one hand handled George, and one wiped glass.
Last week at the plant I left my desk and pens
to work down the line from him; a substitute
body was needed to rivet VINs into the hoods.
A woman with a strange machine in her hands,
I riveted in those long steel strips of numbers,
by which any man can prove a stolen car is his.
Katie Hartsock grew up near Youngstown, Ohio, recently earned her MFA at the University of Michigan, and lives in Chicago, where she works
at the Poetry Foundation.