The Dish Room

I know I already posted a poem that was inspired by my work in my dining hall, which we all call Saga even though that company has not serviced Illinois Wesleyan in many years. Since I spent a lot of my time there, I always enjoyed writing poems or stories that were based off of my many dull or incredibly ridiculous experiences there. For another poetry class I took where we studied different forms of poetry (such as rengas, blues poems, ghazals, and villanelles), I wrote a blank verse poem about what it's like to spend a shift working in the dish room.

I was drawn to this idea because of the structure of blank verse. There is no rhyming, but there is still a focus towards making each line follow iambic pentameter. Therefore the sound of the poem and the lines becomes really important. I took that and applied it to what I was writing about, using the sounds of the dish room to explain the experience of working in there.

This is my first draft of the poem, that was originally titled Behind the Scenes of Saga:

I stretch and reach beyond my grasp, hands close,

arms lift; a clink, then clank, small splash, then splatter.

The music blares from old worn speakers. Force

my hands to do the work while voices screech

outside the room. Behind my back come clanks

and clinks much louder than my own. A fan

blows air to caress my face, attempting plans

to soothe my skin. It fails; the battle won

by angry heat, not gentle breeze. My hands

turn pruny, time goes slowly, people exit

and enter. Nothing’s constant, just the clinking

and clanking; tinkling, splatters. Stop. It stops.

No dirty dishes left. The cups are stacked,

the dishroom clean. Another shift finally done. 

While the sounds work really well, the feel of the poem was not right. We did a lot of peer editing in this class (and all of my writing seminars), so after hearing what my peers had to say, I set to reworking the poem, keeping in mind their ideas as well as my own. After a couple different rewrites, this is what I deemed the "final version" to hand in to my professor as part of my portfolio:

I stretch and reach, just in my grasp. Hands close,

arms lift; a clink, then clank, small splash, then splatter.

A knocking; plop –the garbage fills, the reek

of food not meant for mixing floats -

a toxic gas. The clunks of cups ring round

like hollow bells as bubbling water streams

beneath my hand - a witch’s brew of soap,

forgotten drinks, uneaten food. Each scratch

of sponge against the bowls and plates mimics

the whirring fan, whose frail attempt to soothe

my skin is lost amidst the angry heat.

Loud voices mumble, snippets, words, a life

outside this tedium; it’s masked by wails

of labor, screeches grating from the dish

machine. A sudden hush. The trays have stopped.

“Push tray in, please,” a shout beside me. Pause -

then round they go again. First one, then two

trays - three, then four. A pile forms, the rush

takes over. Thoughts trail off. It’s pull, then dump,

(the plops and splash), short scrubs and clanks, repeat.

My fingers: pruny. Gloves turn red, the time

does not exist.

                             Until the dishes slow,

the trays are single. Language is again

remembered, a rock song can be heard

once more. There’s not much left but sorting through

the forks and knives and spoons, the tinkling drowned

by laughs of sweaty, tired people – they are my break from monotony.

In this version, I bring more specifics to the sounds I mention in the original draft, allowing the reader to know what's ploping or clunking in order for them to imagine being there. I also include more sounds, such as the yell of a fellow coworker and the songs on the radio. This adds more depth to the scene than just focusing on the sounds of the silverware, plates, food, or cups that come around on the try return. There is also a longer sense of time on the final version, moving from the slower beginning of a shift to the rush and to the last of the trays coming around. 

My favorite change comes at the end, when speaking of working with my coworkers. Bringing them into the poem and sort of hinting at the way in which I interact with them breaks up the more mechanistic feel of the sounds that occur while cleaning the dishes; it is a break from the monotony, and as I state that in the poem, I also break away from the iambic pentameter. It is a much stronger ending. On a more personal level, it pays tribute to the fact that my coworkers could always make a shift better, which something that I will always be grateful for and therefore something I wished to portray.