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Picking Up Dad from Work

December 1, 2015/in Poetry, Poetry, Winter-Spring 2016 / by Chelsey Harris

Wagner Castings Co., 1994

It was all golden air and sepia pavement,
gray smoke blooming from industrial stems.

Fly ash flecked parking lot air, drifting black
snow. Smell of melting rubber and brushfires.

I thought the world would always be that way:
low rumbling machinery, conveyer belts spun

thin, cracks spreading like thickening veins,
distant voices spilling from doors opening

and closing like wings, soot stained hands
clapping shoulders covered by gritty cotton.

Chelsey HarrisChelsey Harris is currently in the MFA program at Southern Illinois University and an assistant editor at Crab Orchard Review. Her work has appeared in The Missing Slate, Cooper Street, and Dressing Room Poetry Journal; was shortlisted at Shooter Literary Magazine; and is forthcoming in The Journal and Hope Grows Here: Stories of Resilience from Survivors of Domestic Abuse.

https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png 0 0 Josh Roark https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Josh Roark2015-12-01 14:20:342016-02-29 17:02:04Picking Up Dad from Work

Issue Archive

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  • Issue 26: Winter/Spring 2025
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  • Issue 1: Spring 2012

Genre Archive

  • Creative Nonfiction
  • Essays
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  • Flash Prose
  • Lunch Specials
  • Poetry
  • Interviews
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  • Young Adult

Friday Lunch Blog

Friday Lunch! A serving of contemporary essays published the second Friday of every month.

Today’s course:

Behind the Eight Ball: How to Become Homeless in the Richest Country in the World

June 13, 2025/in Blog / Valerie Nyberg
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Meeting My Child Self at the Trauma Play

May 9, 2025/in Blog / Gale Naylor
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https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Gale-Headshot-01July2024.jpg 1791 1587 Gale Naylor https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Gale Naylor2025-05-09 11:55:262025-06-17 18:07:25Meeting My Child Self at the Trauma Play

Products of Our Environment

March 14, 2025/in Blog / Mitko Grigorov
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https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Mitko_Grigorov.jpg 378 300 Mitko Grigorov https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Mitko Grigorov2025-03-14 11:00:082025-03-31 11:51:57Products of Our Environment

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Midnight Snack

Take a bite out of these late night obsessions.

Tonight’s bites:

Dig Into Genre

May 23, 2025/in Midnight Snack / Lauren Howard
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The dreams in which I’m (not) dying

April 25, 2025/in Midnight Snack / paparouna
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On The Map

March 28, 2025/in Midnight Snack / Ariadne Will
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https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/20220807-ariadnesaxt-MurielReid-01.jpg 1123 2000 Ariadne Will https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Ariadne Will2025-03-28 23:55:152025-03-31 11:49:32On The Map

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Amuse-Bouche

Little bites every third Friday to whet your appetite!

Today’s plate:

Tale of the resistant apple tree

June 6, 2025/in Amuse-Bouche / Tahar Bekri, translated by Patrick Williamson
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https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/TaharBekri.jpg 512 340 Tahar Bekri, translated by Patrick Williamson https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Tahar Bekri, translated by Patrick Williamson2025-06-06 11:00:072025-06-17 18:56:48Tale of the resistant apple tree

Talyshi Wall Graffiti and other poems

May 30, 2025/in Amuse-Bouche / Ghazal
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we don’t spend our lives in the belly of the fish

May 16, 2025/in Amuse-Bouche / translated from French by Gabriella Bedetti and Don Boes
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https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/headshot-translator-Gabriella-Bedetti.jpg 400 400 translated from French by Gabriella Bedetti and Don Boes https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png translated from French by Gabriella Bedetti and Don Boes2025-05-16 11:00:362025-06-17 19:02:56we don’t spend our lives in the belly of the fish

More Amuse-Bouche »

School Lunch

An occasional Wednesday series dishing up today’s best youth writers.

Today’s slice:

I’ve Stayed in the Front Yard

May 12, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Brendan Nurczyk
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A Communal Announcement

April 28, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Isabella Dail
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Seventeen

April 14, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Abigail E. Calimaran
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Word From the Editor

The state of the world breaks my heart every day. Broken hearted, I stay online. I can’t log off. Because my career and schooling are all done remotely, I tend to struggle with boundaries regarding screen time, with knowing when to break away.

Like many of you, I have been spilling my guts online to the world because the guts of the world keep spilling. None of it is pretty. But it’s one of the things that, having searched for basically my entire life, I found that tempers the chaos that lives rent free inside my head.

More from the current editor »
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