by Jen Fitzgerald
Your body: a dash on a graph,
delineated by passing
unconscious ticks.
1.9 hours daily bread and water.
A puddle measures its life in raindrops;
2 billion before it’s called back to the sky.
1.37 hours on weekends and holidays.
Time management dissected
like a paralyzed sparrow.
Religious
obligations grow
by .03 hours,
Sunday
when planes mimic V’s of migration
for fuel efficiency— mechanical arms extend
featherless and southward.
4.73 leisure hours a day.
Volleyball injuries are
serving up, spiking down,
serving up, spiking down,
pounding air with delicate
rivets of friction.
1.9% Productivity increase
coupled with labored
breathing cost decrease of 1%
slows down the line,
move over to the side
if you plan to die.
And 4,609 will—
458 by homicide;
Of the 1,800 images in a single minute
of stop animation- only one burns
its way off the reel, jumps to its death
rather than feel the projector slap.
Line-mate, wrench;
adulterer, blade.
All murderer and murdered—
loves we molt to slice our pie
chart of a life have
to fall somewhere- sweep them up,
convince your country
you wouldn’t kill for a job.
Jen Fitzgerald is a poet and a native New Yorker who received her MFA in Poetry at Lesley University. She is the Count Director for VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. Her work has been featured on PBS Newshour, in Tin House, and AAWW: Open City, among others.
