Work Lunch by Lee Bains is a captivating debut book of poetry that centers food as much more than sustenance – it is communication between worlds. A palimpsest of experiences and history, these poems seat us at his very specific tables and plates of food, then draw concentric circles to connect us to our own tables, our own plates, and the universal considerations of all plates. Through the journey of food, his poems portray vanishing landscapes, and what takes their place. At the same time, Bains creates a new and different lens through which to see Southerners: like his Granddaddy, in Salad, whose “…eyesight had dimmed,/” but whose “vision had grown clearer./”.
These poems give us the South as “the confluence of seasonings and knowings from/”. He showcases a melting pot that many want to, in turns, erase, co-opt, redefine in their own likeness. In Salad, Bains takes responsibility for himself and declares “…if words weren’t filled with good spirits,/charged with grace, humbled in not knowing,/they could do unspeakable horror./” – one of many lessons from his Granddaddy, who pinched and pulled to arrive at this place of himself.
Bains shares observations about how the sanitization of culture through convenience can cause us to lose the purity of dirt. He builds a bridge between past and present and somehow builds hope. Like grief – Bains speaks names to keep memories alive. These foods, the places, and people who give life to the food and allow for solidarity and humanity.
Like dough, words are “pinched and pulled” into biscuits of delicious stories. He kneads facts between Birmingham and Atlanta, economics and necessities, those who compromise/acquiesce/surrender and those who don’t, into loaves of unconditional love made from the history of an environment and the hard truths that live in the everyday of that environment. He shares ideas about how repackaged culture out-prices the people who bring that culture to life and asks: do we turn into the skid of change or curse it out and resist? The language is lyrical, accessible and brilliantly crafted.
Rita Hickey: The poems read musically, of course, as you’re a songwriter. There are breaks in the narrative as the words shift, move and sing. How did you decide on the structure of the poems?
Lee Bains: I appreciate that connection between musicality and the form on the page! I typically write poetry in free verse, I think partly because most of my songs (and thus most of my art-writing) are written with rhyme and meter being central to them, and I like to be able to stretch out a little bit when I write poetry. So the movement of scene into narrative, narrative into memory, memory into reflection, back to scene, etc is hopefully in conversation with the free movement of the words across time and the text across the page. Indentation, line breaks, and other methods of crafting the visual object of text on the page can help to give rhythm, movement and form to the poem without having to use more rigid structures of meter and rhyme, and can help me try to lend a degree of fluidity, expressiveness and dynamics that, say, bursts of syncopated notes or vocal runs or drum rolls might could give to a song. The formal structure also aims to describe the ways in which sensations, impressions, thoughts, memories can cascade off one another, interrupt one another, encapsulate each other. I work very hard on both the visual shapes of the text on the page, as well as how those shapes read. Some folks have commented on the trim-size of the book, and that was actually due to my ignorance of how an 8×11 page in a word processor would translate to a finished book’s page dimensions (and, for that matter, ignorance of what the term “trim-size” meant at all!). Because I depended so heavily on indentation and enjambment to create the visual shapes and movements of text on an 8×11 page size, we had to spend a ton of time carefully laying out the book and figuring out which trim-size could work to preserve the form. Hub City was graciously patient with me through that process, and I got to learn some about how layout software works!
RH: I so appreciated the unique perspective in Filling Station about how taste can be taken from us as we age – a point not often associated with growing older. This poem feels different in rhythm, more formal and abstract than the others. Is it different, structurally?
LB: Thank you for noting that this poem stands distinct within the book, both in tone and form; I’d intended for those qualities and its position within the arc of the collection to be significant. What you describe so well as formality and abstraction should, yes, hopefully underpin a loss or distortion of sensation.
RH: Is writing poetry different from writing lyrics? Is there a different connection with the words? With the audience?
LB: For me, they are vastly different. I’ve read some of my song lyrics as poetry at readings before, and my lyrics without music are, to me, like a chair missing a leg or two. Some of them can maybe stand in reading if I’m careful, but they usually lack the solidity or depth that the sound of the music lends to the whole. Ideally, in a song, a considerable amount of meaning is generated by the music, itself. With a poem, I have to rely completely on the words and formal structure to generate that meaning. So I have to drill down into those aspects. Also, with a recording or performance of a song, I get to control what it sounds like. But, when a reader reads a poem, they ultimately control what it sounds like. They are the singer interpreting the song. So I have to consider that in the writing, as well. I remember being in college in British Lit, and how our professor encouraged us to read the poems of William Blake (which I’d always just read in printed text on a page) in their original and intended context, being part of his etched, printed, water-colored artworks. Reading the poems in conversation with the visual art always enriched, and often complicated, their impression on me as a reader. With songs, I strive for a similar sort of conversation between text and sound. With printed poems, I strive for a similar conversation between text and visual presence on the page.
RH: The poems contain a “pinch/pull” with hope. Like the village creek’s “deep-wounded belly” in River Fish Market, whose banks no longer produce fish or memories, there is also the way the warmth of lunchtime chatter leads you “alongside the soft/humming river/and her stooped listening trees/carrying you home”. Do you write your way to the hope, making sense of the world, or trying to, as you write?
LB: Thank you so much for noting that, and for asking yet another such thoughtful question. I do—and I’m going to steal this from you—write my way to the hope. (And your way of putting that is better than mine would be!) I think about a couple writers who I greatly respect for their ability to know the past, confront present reality, seek out the present good, and create visions of a better future. One of those writers, Arundhati Roy beautifully said, “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. Maybe many of us won’t be here to greet her, but on a quiet day, if I listen very carefully, I can hear her breathing.” And David Graeber said, “The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.” When I write from a place of purpose (which some days takes more effort to locate than others!), I find myself in those twin processes—of listening and making—in the service of the world and her people as best I can figure it. The experience of writing these poems, focusing on a break in the middle of a work day, has served as an important lesson to me—how a work day, which for me can often be a stressful and isolating experience, can be transformed by stepping out from the thick of it, by stopping to eat, by taking that tiny act of work-stoppage, that tiny risk. Maybe I’m risking falling behind on a job by spending the time to leave the jobsite and feed myself, maybe risking the extra few dollars by buying something to eat instead of eating something brought from home, maybe risking a boss’s anger by taking a full lunch break. (And plenty often, as represented in a good number of the poems, I don’t take the risk; I continue working, eat as I work.) But, often, when I reflect on these experiences, I see that it’s very often by taking these tiny risks (breaking my isolation chamber, as I write in “National Fast Food Entity 2”), that I forcefully reframe myself and my purpose, at least a little bit, from being a producer to being a person, and the collective human experience (and hope) can spill in. In these moments, I have at least an invitation to not merely be the producer of something or consumer of something, but rather to be a human being amongst human beings, a worker among workers. And, when I can situate myself in the fact that I’m a worker among workers, springs of hope and solidarity abound.
RH: Is this book a return for you “to the peas, the greens, the cornbread, the buttermilk./” (Salad) like your Granddaddy? Or an homage to him and that foundation of your Southern self? Or both?
LB: That is a great question. I think in a lot of ways, this book is a reflection on the elders and neighbors and coworkers that have demonstrated to me better, truer, more loving, more just, more sustainable ways of living, thinking and working. My Granddaddy demonstrated those things to me over the 19 years we shared together on this earth in ways that resonate more and more the older I get. His relationship to the peas and greens and cornbread and buttermilk was ultimately marked by pleasure, rootedness, tradition, healthfulness, simplicity, humility, gratitude, and love. Reflecting on him and his stories helps me to connect with those ideals myself, just like eating black-eyed peas, turnip greens, and buttermilk cornbread does. (I never did get a taste for drinking straight buttermilk, despite his best efforts to instill it in me!)
RH: Every stanza feels steeped in personal lessons. One particular lesson resonated for me that I circled back to several times, in Salad when your Grandaddy taught you that you “…could feel the hurt and keep moving/that I had what I needed to survive.” It feels like a thesis of this book. If you had to name one lesson that stands out for you –understanding this book is an exhibition of that lesson – could you name one?
LB: You know, I really appreciate you honing in on that particular pair of lines. As we are moving deeper into a period of extreme economic exploitation and austerity, stuck between the polarizing viciousness of Trumpism and the isolating ambivalence of neoliberalism, that feels like a particularly important lesson to me right now, too. And its twin comes later in the same poem, when I come to reflect on “the work that …/ sustains us,/instructs us, / … / that we can take care of ourselves,/that we, together, have what it takes to survive.” I learn that, not just from him, but from so many of the coworkers, mentors, and lunch-makers in the book, who find and share ways of getting through hard times, and doing so with soul and solidarity.
RH: Manual labor exorcises something for you as a writer because it provides you with a “tired body and a fresh mind./” (Biscuit). Does touring as a musician fit into this category? Does it work as a palate cleanser in a way for the creative to come through?
LB: That is another really good question. As I’m on tour currently, I’m acutely aware of the labor of touring, particularly in the way that I do it. I typically book my shows myself, “tour manage” myself, drive myself, carry my gear myself, sell the merch myself, etc. I once toured with a guy whose dad had been a professional gigging musician in Detroit, and, when the guy declined my offer to help him carry his gear into a venue one night, he quoted his dad to me, “This is my job. I move gear for a living. I play the shows for free.” That’s real. The physical exertion and exhaustion, long drives, logistics, et cetera of touring can sort of start to feel similar to that flowing movement of painting a house or running deck boards. I know that I’ve really settled into the work of a touring period when, as I’m driving, or hustling gear, or folding shirts, or making a fast pit stop, or laying out a pallet on a floor, melodies or lines start to come to me in the same way they might at the top of a ladder. I’m lost in the work, and the art starts bubbling up. The irony of heavy touring is that, while I got into it because I love making music, I wind up having a lot less time to make music when I’m on the road than I do when I’m at home. So, the breaks between tours are the best chance I have to piece together the scraps and shreds of language and sound that have fallen on me while I’m working.
RH: Religious language is woven throughout; the poems creating a sacred circle to protect the idea that we can each respect each other’s spiritual ideas and practices. Has your faith always factored in to your writing?
LB: Thank you so much for noting that, and for bringing back that image that I describe in “Mediterranean,” truly one of the most beautiful photos I’ve seen from the 21st century, where a group of Christian men protected a group of Muslim men in prayer during the 2011 Tahrir Square protests in Egypt. Just looking at it brings tears to my eyes. In the Gospel of John, Jesus says, “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” In that photo, amongst those men, I see the love that I’ve seen in practice on the street between people of many faiths and of no particular faith at all. I saw it in the Occupy Atlanta protests that were happening around the same time, and was struck by that global sentiment and solidarity. I’m grateful that I can say I have gained spiritual guidance, wisdom and anchoring from people who are Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant like me, and all kinds of others. I’m very deeply moved by the fact that, around the world, through place and time, through religions and cultures, human beings have always had the capacity to recognize and honor the divine spark in other human beings, and to act accordingly. (That spark has been around a lot longer than we have.) When that happens between people who earthly systems of power and exploitation try to turn against one another, it feels like an opening to another dimension, to a deeper reality. I think I’d call that the Kingdom of Heaven.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Lee Bains is a poet and songwriter from Birmingham, Alabama, who since 2012 has released four studio albums of what Rolling Stone calls “Southern gospel punk,” and will publish his debut poetry collection Work Lunch with Hub City Press in 2026 after several of the poems were first published by the New Yorker in 2021. A cult songwriter forged in independent scenes, his work has carried him all over the U.S. and Europe, has received acclaim from the likes of Rolling Stone, The New York Times, NPR, The New Yorker, and The Guardian, and has led him to be a supporting musician for other artists like Lonnie Holley, Moor Mother, and Algiers. Lee has lent his work to support striking coal miners, immigrants’ rights groups, abortion funds, and anti-racism organizations. He has performed and read at Emory University, the University of Mississippi, Tulane University, Auburn University, and The Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm, Sweden). He lives in Atlanta, Georgia, where he works between tours as a handyman.
ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER: Rita Hickey’s writing has appeared in Rum Punch Press and most recently she opened the Women in Noir reading for the 2025 Beacon LitFest. In past lives she wrote, produced and performed in an educational theater company out of Brooklyn and ran creative writing workshops on Rikers Island for women and men. She lives in Manhattan and is at work on her first novel.