Three Poems by Flavian Mark Lupinetti
Photo by Kateryna Babaieva
Dig, Dug, Have Dug
You better have a good mind—
always the same paternal inflection,
ominous as a ransom note—
or a strong back.
Sometimes Dad delivered that threat
when we mixed concrete in the sauna
of our West Virginia summers
or when we muscled the driveway clear
of snow, winter’s version of wet concrete.
But his greatest pleasure came
from admonishing me while I dug—
dug a trench for an electric line,
dug a footer for a patio,
dug out the stump of a dead tree.
If you don’t study hard in school,
you’ll dig ditches like this for a living.
He considered my A in ninth grade algebra
insufficient insulation against a lifetime of toil.
Dig, he ordered.
And so I dug.
I chewed into the earth,
entrusted with the good shovel,
the one with the carbon steel blade
and the hickory handle,
the shovel Grandpa used in the mines.
And again I dug.
Learning to avoid the gas lines
that if damaged would trigger
a nuclear fission magnitude blast
blowing up me, the house, and
everything else from here to Pittsburgh.
And I dug some more.
I wish the old man were alive today.
I’d take him to a Steelers game.
I’d show him his grandsons.
I’d demonstrate
how unrealistically rosy
was his prediction
of employment opportunities
for 21st century ditch diggers.
But I took his lesson to heart,
and today, after twenty years of schooling,
when I dig in the New Mexico desert
extracting granite boulders way too heavy
for shot put practice, I don’t make a dime.
Dig, my wife says.
These surgeon’s hands that once
plied titanium forceps and needle holders
now wield a wood and steel post hole digger
crude as a crowbar
useful as chopsticks.
Steel Mill Cento
This poem comes to you instead of flowers,
graveyard roses, or incense smoke.
The mill burns on now, a burst of cinders,
the pink crown of hellfire.
Why is the air filled with smoke?
Above dirty snow a statue of our founder
imposes itself like twisted black coal,
a thrill for violence familiar as his own
jaw under the razor. The poison descends,
lungs heaving all day in a sulphur mist.
The terror of iron striking iron and iron striking back.
You pull it in again, the vein-colored smoke,
and blow it toward a ceiling you can’t see.
Because the slag heap burns all day
and all night, it’s never dark.
There’s no music for this scarf of smoke
wrapped around your shoulders.
My sin lies in not screaming loud.
A bar of Steel—
it is only smoke at the heart of it,
smoke and the blood of a man.
Listen, man, don’t tell me about the poems you sent.
Don’t degrade yourself with empty hopes,
leaving in a great smoky fury.
You made Steel together and
you won your dignity together.
Go there. Take a bite of iron.
Sources for the poem, in order of appearance: Anna Akhmatova, Mark Doty, Philip Levine, Jim Daniels, Adrienne Rich, Tess Gallagher, Dorianne Laux, Maya Angelou, Carl Sandburg, Charles Bukowski, C. P. Cavafy, Frank O’Hara, Mark Nowak
Picked Up
today they picked up a ragtag regiment
of fentanyl smugglers
I never knew
so many fentanyl smugglers
hang out at Home Depot
trying to land a landscaping gig
today they picked up a choir
of cartel members
who could imagine
so many cartel members
hold day jobs
carving up cow carcasses
in the packing house
today they picked up a pimpload
of human traffickers
what are the odds
so many human traffickers
pick lettuce as a side hustle
I guess chopping lettuce
lets them flex their muscles outside
because human trafficking
is indoors work
today they picked up
the terrorists Enrique and Tito
how could I have suspected
that when Enrique and Tito
stocked the scrubs in the locker room
and mopped the floor in my operating room
and pushed the patients on gurneys back and forth
and took the instruments to the sterilizer
and collected the contaminated linens
and hauled out the biowaste bags
they did those things to divert us
from their terrorist activity
Flavian Mark Lupinetti, a poet, fiction writer, and heart surgeon, is the author of The Pronunciation Part (2025), winner of the The Poetry Box Chapbook Contest. Mark is a previous contributor to Barrelhouse. His stories and poems also appear in Bellevue Literary Review, Cutthroat, Redivider, Sport Literate, ZYZZYVA, and elsewhere. A West Virginia native, Mark lives in New Mexico.