Work Lunch

“Work Lunch is not simply the best of what poetry can be; it is proof that blues, soul and some god somewhere are real. This is what writing, witnessing with your senses, and giving a fuck can do. Lee Bains is one of them ones, y’all.” —Kiese Laymon, author of Long Division

“A gospel of the steam table, a homily on solidarity, fueled by cornbread and buttermilk, special dogs and egg foo young—the brilliant and generous poetry of Lee Bains confronts the undermined promises made to the souls among us who work the hardest for the least.” —John T. Edge, author of House of Smoke, host of TrueSouth

“Work Lunch makes clear that Bains’s words, which have often been jammed tight into punk rock’s pelting cadence, deserve space and grace.” —The Bitter Southerner

“Lee Bains is a true poet of the South. Split between the distinctive Southern cities of Atlanta, GA and Birmingham, AL, the poems in Work Lunch are a sensory delight—lush with the smells, sounds, sights, and textures of the diversity of cuisines and peoples the Deep South has to offer. But alongside a genuine and deeply-rooted love for the region is an unwillingness to look away from its complications. Bains calls it like he sees it, offering critiques of issues like capitalistic greed, worker exploitation, racism, sexism, and maybe most obviously, hunger, but he does so with the keen eye and linguistic musicality I love and have come to expect from his songwriting. Work Lunch is a stunning testament to something Southerners know well and practice often: food brings us together, builds community, carries memory. In these poems, Bains centers mealtimes as a ways to break down barriers between cultures, languages, and socioeconomic classes, proving again and again that the divisions between us are actually not so large. Bains makes me proud to be of Birmingham, of Alabama, of the complicated South. This is a striking and necessary debut.” —Raye Hendrix, author of What Good Is Heaven

“‘What is America, / if not the workers of these lands, / tucked in the hated corners of this sprawling nation, / hidden from the teetering walls of dusty leather-bound law?’ This question feeds the core of Lee Bains’s Work Lunch. In this electric collection, Bains finds these hidden workers at the lunch table, and the poems here invite us to sit with these workers and learn their faces before their faces disappear into the dust and smoke of the next shift. Sometimes, the table is in the corner of a meat-and-three. Sometimes, the table is the dashboard of a car fighting the current of midday traffic. In Work Lunch, Bains has created an American labor odyssey that moves in the traditions of Whitman and Sandburg with a lyric voice that could only be borne out of this moment and could only belong to Bains.” —Jason McCall, author of Dear Hero

“Bains is on the hunt for the tastes and smells of his beloved hometown, Birmingham, Alabama, wherever he goes […]. Food and the shared experience of a lunch break tie us to places and to one another.” —Abby McCabe, Booklist

Lee Bains is a poet and songwriter from Birmingham, Alabama. Since 2012, he has released four studio albums of what Rolling Stone calls “Southern gospel punk.” His debut poetry collection, Work Lunch, will be published by Hub City Press in 2026. Several of his 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. He has received acclaim from publications such as Rolling Stone, The New York Times, NPR, The New Yorker, and The Guardian. He has also served as a supporting musician for 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 as a handyman between tours.

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