LABOR POEM OF THE WEEK
Harold Phillips | Published on 3/15/2026
A Woman’s Labor
I have shopped and cooked,
wandered long dazzling aisles
for shiny apples, plump golden
peaches, cloves to spice the chicken.
I have chopped and sliced, grated
and peeled. Here at the counter
I mixed and stirred,
great chunks of my life falling
into stews like raw meat,
great pillows of morning and rafts
of afternoon floating into the sea
as I repaired and mended,
dug and weeded, falling
on my knees to clip mint and basil.
Excerpted from A Woman’s Labor (page 30), by Geraldine Connolly, in The Book of Jobs: Poems About Work, edited by Erin Murphy