Lately I make a living as a prep cook for SSP America, a restaurant-management firm. Since May of 2023 I have cut onions, portioned sauces and refried beans and turkey slices and many other foodstuffs, used a paddle to mix 200 pounds’ worth of diced potatoes and oil and salt/pepper mix, assembled spring rolls and enchiladas and burritos and yogurt parfaits, fished chicken wings out of congealed grease, and performed many other production tasks. But since late last year, my main job has been to use a hand slicer to subdivide tomatoes, discard the slices unfit to eat, arrange the edited tomatoes into aluminum steam pans, and seal them for delivery with 24″ plastic film, with a label that includes creation date and use-by date.

Over the months I have gotten better at the subtasks of tomato slicing. Chef Adam Rosewicz himself once complimented me on how “pretty” my finished trays were. And my boss Don Williams has called me “Tomatoman.” I take pride in my workmanship and my dependability. The all-day-long repetition suits my temperament as a former marathoner and semipro potter for whom a three-hour session almost always ends too soon.

And as someone who has worked earnestly on all forms of poetry for more than 17 years, a job that involves mostly muscle memory is a Godsend. My mind is free to play with ideas for poems, with unique phrasing, with the little nagging business of a poem that had been written and posted but wasn’t quite right. The hours pass quickly when I have a good tomato-slicing rhythm going and I keep getting good word-notions. Realizing that Lenticular and Perpendicular rhyme can make my day.

The answer to the question “Tomato-slicing poet, or poetic tomato slicer?” is, of course, both. I am proud to turn the work of my hands into a good income. I am only slightly prouder of being a poet who keeps pushing at, and changing, his limitations.