Introduction to WHERE THE WAREHOUSE THINGS ARE by TONY ROBLES

Tony Robles presents the Introduction to

Where the Warehouse Things Are by Tony Robles

(Redhawk Publications, 2024)

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Introduction

A famous boxing trainer was analyzing a fighter’s performance during a broadcast where he was facing his toughest opponent to date. It was a test of the up-and-coming pugilist’s skill, fortitude, and courage—all the requisites needed to advance as a top-caliber fighter. We’ll
see what he has in the warehouse, the trainer remarked as the combatants plumbed the depths of the warehouses that stored their blood, spirit—fire. I thought of this while working at my current job at a warehouse in Hendersonville, NC. What was in my warehouse, I asked. I had never worked with tools; did not know a socket wrench from a toaster, a U-bolt from a U-boat. And there I was, under the bright lights of the warehouse, surrounded by a crowd of boxes and tools and implements, cheering, jeering, shouting: Show us what you got! I was told to make sure to secure bolts, to see to it that they were, as the German adage insisted (This is what the trickster techs told me), goodintight. In the warehouse, I was assigned the job of assembling motorized and manual wheelchairs and other accessibility items such as walkers and commodes. The bolts of anxiety and uncertainty were firmly placed in the warehouse that was me. As I worked assembling wheelchairs, I thought about the job with the display workers union in California, which I never showed up for, having been intimidated by the droves of men with staple guns in their holsters. I thought about another job that would have led to my becoming a merchant seaman. Again, I didn’t show up after being intimidated by a hard-bitten seaman who was convinced12 I smoked marijuana. Many years later, I find myself in a 15-round battle with myself in a warehouse in Western North Carolina. The warehouse is a chance to make good on my no-shows of the past. In building wheelchairs and commodes and walkers, I am, in a sense, building and repairing what was broken in me. I roll a cart filled with cardboard and refuse to a pair of metal debris boxes each morning and afternoon as part of my duties. I take the broken parts of myself and toss them into the boxes. I use the tools I’ve been given to build something new with new hands. I search the warehouse and find myself assembling and building what I didn’t think possible. I come upon a box, a box that has been beyond my reach. I reach upward and finally pull it off the shelf. With my box cutter, I open it. It is filled with poems. It was what was in the warehouse all along. It is my gift to you.

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Tony Robles is the author of the poetry collections, Cool Don’t Live Here No More—A Letter to San Francisco; Fingerprints of a Hunger Strike, and Thrift Store Metamorphosis. He was named Carl Sandburg Writer in Residence by the Friends of Carl Sandburg in Flat Rock, NC in 2020. He was short list nominated for Poet Laureate of San Francisco in 2017. His poetry, short stories and essays have appeared in numerous publications. He earned his MFA in creative writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2023 and is currently a professor of creative writing in the MFA graduate program at Lenoir Rhyne University in North Carolina.