#What Work Is

[aaknopf]

On this last day of poetry month, let’s savor one last page from The New Yorker’s store of century-defining poems—the classics that we return to again and again. “What Work Is,” by Knopf poet Philip Levine (1948–2015), is one of them—a poem that never ages in its call to our humanity. Thank you for heeding that call and for sharing poems with your people in these challenging times.

What Work Is

We stand in the rain in a long line waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work. You know what work is—if you’re old enough to read this you know what work is, although you may not do it. Forget you. This is about waiting, shifting from one foot to another. Feeling the light rain falling like mist into your hair, blurring your vision until you think you see your own brother ahead of you, maybe ten places. You rub your glasses with your fingers, and of course it’s someone else’s brother, narrower across the shoulders than yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin that does not hide the stubbornness, the sad refusal to give in to rain, to the hours wasted waiting, to the knowledge that somewhere ahead a man is waiting who will say, “No, we’re not hiring today,” for any reason he wants. You love your brother, now suddenly you can hardly stand the love flooding you for your brother, who’s not beside you or behind or ahead because he’s home trying to sleep off a miserable night shift at Cadillac so he can get up before noon to study his German. Works eight hours a night so he can sing Wagner, the opera you hate most, the worst music ever invented. How long has it been since you told him you loved him, held his wide shoulders, opened your eyes wide and said those words, and maybe kissed his cheek? You’ve never done something so simple, so obvious, not because you’re too young or too dumb, not because you’re jealous or even mean or incapable of crying in the presence of another man, no, just because you don’t know what work is.

More on this book and author:

Browse books by Philip Levine. 

Learn more about A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker and browse the companion centennial anthology, A Century of Fiction in The New Yorker.

Hear Kevin Young, poetry editor at The New Yorker and editor of A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker, speak to Knopf editor Deborah Garrison about the poetry anthology in a special New Yorker Poetry Podcast episode.

Celebrate The New Yorker’s centenary with additional events throughout 2025 including special exhibitions from the New York Public Library (A Century of The New Yorker, running from Feb. 22, 2025 – Feb. 21, 2026 and available online here) and the Society of Illustrators (Drawn From The New Yorker, running from Jan 8, 2025 – May 3, 2025).

Visit our Tumblr to share this poem and peruse other poems, audio recordings, and broadsides in the Knopf poem-a-day series.

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[manwalksintobar]

The Clerk's Tale // Spencer Reece

I am thirty-three and working in an expensive clothier,  selling suits to men I call “Sir.” These men are muscled, groomed and cropped— with wives and families that grow exponentially. Mostly I talk of rep ties and bow ties, of full-Windsor knots and half-Windsor knots, of tattersall, French cuff, and English spread collars, of foulards, neats, and internationals, of pincord, houndstooth, nailhead, and sharkskin. I often wear a blue pin-striped suit. My hair recedes and is going gray at the temples. On my cheeks there are a few pimples. For my terrible eyesight, horn-rimmed spectacles. One of my fellow-workers is an old homosexual who works hard and wears bracelets with jewels. No one can rival his commission checks. On his break he smokes a Benson & Hedges cigarette, puffing expectantly as a Hollywood starlet. He has carefully applied a layer of Clinique bronzer to enhance the tan on his face and neck. His hair is gone except for a few strands which are combed across his scalp. He examines his manicured lacquered nails. I admire his studied attention to details: his tie stuck to his shirt with masking tape, his teeth capped, his breath mint in place. The old homosexual and I laugh in the back over a coarse joke involving an octopus. Our banter is staccato, staged and close like those “Spanish Dances” by Granados. I sometimes feel we are in a musical— gossiping backstage between our numbers. He drags deeply on his cigarette. Most of his life is over. Often he refers to himself as “an old faggot.” He does this bemusedly, yet timidly. I know why he does this. He does this because his acceptance is finally complete— and complete acceptance is always bittersweet. Our hours are long. Our backs bent. We are more gracious than English royalty. We dart amongst the aisles tall as hedgerows. Watch us face into the merchandise. How we set up and take apart mannequins as if we were performing autopsies. A naked body, without pretense, is of no use. It grows late. I hear the front metal gate close down. We begin folding the ties correctly according to color. The shirts—Oxfords, broadcloths, pinpoints— must be sized, stacked, or rehashed. The old homosexual removes his right shoe, allowing his gigantic bunion to swell. There is the sound of cash being counted— coins clinking, bills swishing, numbers whispered— One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. . . We are changed when the transactions are done— older, dirtier, dwarfed. A few late customers gawk in at us. We say nothing. Our silence will not be breached. The lights go off, one by one— the dressing room lights, the mirror lights. Then it is very late. How late? Eleven? We move to the gate. It goes up. The gate’s grating checkers our cheeks. This is the Mall of America. The light is bright and artificial, yet not dissimilar to that found in a Gothic cathedral. You must travel down the long hallways to the exits before you encounter natural light. One final formality: the manager checks out bags. The old homosexual reaches into his over-the-shoulder leather bag— the one he bought on his European travels  with his companion of many years. He finds a stick of lip balm and applies it to his lips liberally, as if shellacking them. Then he inserts one last breath mint and offers one to me. The gesture is fraternal and occurs between us many times. At last, we bid each other good night. I watch him fade into the many-tiered parking lot, where the thousands of cars have come and are now gone. This is how our day ends. This is how our day always ends. Sometimes snow falls like rice. See us take to our dimly lit exits, disappearing into the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul; Minneapolis is sleek and St. Paul, named after the man who had to be shown, is smaller, older, and somewhat withdrawn. Behind us, the moon pauses over the vast egg-like dome of the mall. See us loosening our ties among you. We are alone. There is no longer any need to express ourselves.

[corviiids]

was talking to a coworker and realised i could not for the life of me remember his name but i was too embarrassed to ask because we've spoken multiple times so mid-conversation i started concocting a plan to nudge the conversation towards the ID photos on our building passes so that i could be like oh my ID photo is awful haha the camera they use to take these has a real talent for making me look as unphotogenic as possible and then he would say oh yes me too haha everyone says that (because they do) and then i would be able to say well let me see yours it can't be as bad as mine! and he would show me his ID because we are coworkers and why wouldn't he and this would allow me to see his building pass which of course would have his name on it and then i would be able to say well yours is perfectly nice it must be me that's the problem! and then we would have a polite chuckle about it and i would have his name without needing to ask for it and he would be none the wiser and all would be well but then before i could execute this fine plan a little voice in my head went "so this is some light yagami bull shit you are about to pull" which was such a violent reality check it shocked me completely out of my embarrassment and i went "hey im so sorry your name has slipped my mind could you remind me" and he did and it was fine.

[meltygetswifi]

not to be a dirty commie or anything but i don't think any one person should have enough money to solve world hunger and then get to decide not to

[kawareo]

Art snobs are actually a thousand times less annoying than people who respond to everything with "it's not that deep bro"

[darklight-owl]

Uh oh! You are now a were-animal! This means you become a human-sized animal hybrid with uncontrollable bloodlust every night!

Spin this wheel to get your species

[inkskinned]

i love you vaccines i love you research i love you reading the book instead of having chatgpt summarize it i love you critically thinking rather than reacting to a headline i love you investigating the source material i love you science i love you math even though you are personally my enemy (math/yn slowburn) i love you writing even though you try to stab me a lot i love you Experts in Your Field i love you Using The Brain

[scribefindegil]

being a writer leads to a genuinely helpful but also very stupid kind of mindfulness where you'll be having a sobbing breakdown or the worst anxiety attack of your life and think "okay, I really need to pay attention to how this feels. so I can incorporate it into my fanfiction."

[icewindandboringhorror]

(also feel free in the tags to clarify Why you made the choice you made!! :0c)

[golswia]

supple-MENTAL am I right-

I love how fast Jon spiraled between seasons

[holographings]

someone on twitter said Imagine what s2 jayce would give to talk to s1 viktor just one more time. and someone had a time travel alternate dimension fic ready to go. and i read it. and now my face is being eaten by 3750 feral dogs i think

[karda]

i miss science class bro. we dont put things under microscopes as much as we should

[manwalksintobar]

The End and the Beginning // Wislawa Szymborska

After every war someone has to clean up. Things won’t straighten themselves up, after all.

Someone has to push the rubble to the side of the road, so the corpse-filled wagons can pass.

Someone has to get mired in scum and ashes, sofa springs, splintered glass, and bloody rags.

Someone has to drag in a girder to prop up a wall. Someone has to glaze a window, rehang a door.

Photogenic it’s not, and takes years. All the cameras have left for another war.

We’ll need the bridges back, and new railway stations. Sleeves will go ragged from rolling them up.

Someone, broom in hand, still recalls the way it was. Someone else listens and nods with unsevered head. But already there are those nearby starting to mill about who will find it dull.

From out of the bushes sometimes someone still unearths rusted-out arguments and carries them to the garbage pile.

Those who knew what was going on here must make way for those who know little. And less than little. And finally as little as nothing.

In the grass that has overgrown causes and effects, someone must be stretched out blade of grass in his mouth gazing at the clouds.

[pirateprincessjess]

When I was a kid my family pretended to get raptured so I would think I was left behind on earth while they all went to heaven.

I was like 8 years old and my sister and mom had gotten really into the Left Behind novels (bible fan fic about the rapture). In the books when the rapture happened the clothes that people were wearing when they got raptured were left behind in neatly folded piles.

One day when I was getting home from school my family decided that they would leave piles of neatly folded clothes around the house, and then hide in the basement.

The intended effect was that I would get home and see the clothes then, think that my family had been raptured and that I wasn’t good enough to get into heaven… or something?

The problem was that I had never read these books, and didn’t really think about the rapture very often. There was no reason that I would see some laundry on the floor and think “The rapture happened and I’ve been abandoned by God! I’ll never see my family again!! Oh nooo!!!!”

I just sat down and watched cartoons and eventually my family got bored and revealed that they were all hiding in the basement.

It’s a good thing I didn’t understand the joke, otherwise that shit would have been traumatic.

[demaparbat-hp]

That infamous prison escape.