Survey of Silt

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.

Jen Fitzgerald

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.