sleepworker

shift, shift, shift shift, shift, shift, shift, paycheck/shift, shift, shift, shift, shift, death.

in her sleep she works

rustling in her lab coat & shaking tired in her

booties,

so as to not get the floor dirty---

the medical supplies she works on throughout the night shift

will one day help another stay alive

when confronted with calamity &

no doubt, when she began working,

that brought some kind of comfort to the overall

bearing down of the hours &

the stressors that come with a paycheck

which disappears as quickly as it lands in her

hands.

 

the sleepworker knows not a moment of rest---

you know her because she serves you

she makes the things that help your kids in college

she stands behind the scenes &

dies behind the scenes,

a ghost amongst ghosts whose soul purpose on this earth seems to be

work---

this work brings no personal gratification,

for it only reveals her use to a world still very much ruled by

men---

she will most likely outlive the men she knows,

yet she earns ¾’s of what a man makes &

she works twice as much unpaid time as a man does,

yet she makes up 70% of the 1.3 billion people living in poverty in the

world.

 

nodding off,

then snapping her head back as quick as she can between

nods,

her eyes grow blurry but the machine that she works on stays rumbling in

repetition---

with one slight wrong move,

she can lose a finger,

but her habit is set &

she risks it all as she

sleepworks the early morning away,

because this world has no meaning for her

except that the next shift will come

soon.

Reviews

[S.Hunt]

Tragic, true, and well paced. Equality for women still unspoken, We didn't even succeed in in taking back the night. The term "Take Back the Night" came from the title of a 1977 memorial read by Anne Pride at an anti-violence rally in Pittsburgh