Two Poems

The Illness Factory

In my fever, I laboured. I did the work
of diagnostics and daily maintenance, of pretending
to be well. I mapped out the best time of day
for every activity, rewired my motor

neurons to the house electrical so I could tense
the lights off, routed my tear ducts to the pipes
to flood the water tank. Every internal business
process optimized and streaming. But the truth was

I never committed to the role. I was a bad worker
of my own body. I rolled in late from the dayshift
at my real life, called in sick to my own sickbed
spent too much on prescriptions and let profit

margins hover in the red. My safety
standards a hazard to everyone
in the vicinity. On shift, I was usually
one down and under

the influence. Hooked on the numb
cloud I’d float out on every night
and the reassurance of knowing
at least I was following doctor’s orders.

I couldn’t quit the business entirely but I shut down
the research wing. Fed up with not knowing
what the factory floor was making, I halted
all non-essential production. I called myself

into the office for a lecture on commitment
to the cause, gave myself a bad reference
lay down in front of the machines I’d built
and begged them to dismantle me.

The Fifth in My Palm

I got out of the hospital and got a job
carrying seven dinner plates in one hand, performing
the magic trick of remembering

which mingling suit ordered which bad beer. I rolled
tables up the stadium’s spiral driveway
for game nights at the Pinnacle Club, bussed

plastic shot glasses in the hotel nightclub for prom, raced
laundry bins down the hallway like go-carts, faked a smoke
habit to get my 15-min break, biked

home over the dredged river
where the missing girls live. My shift started
at 4pm and ended just before dawn or whenever

I was too tired to twist napkins into breakfast flowers
for the extra $3.63 of overtime, hiding in the walk-in
with a plate of wedding cake just to sit down. I took the job

cause they fed me whatever the guests ate and didn’t care
if I wore the same cheap boot-cut dress pants
every shift. I was making up for lost wages, combing

last year’s activity logs for the line between broke
and stable. No one told me then that some bodies can’t
handle everything, that a day off shouldn’t cost me

a meal, that mine was worth more than what it could carry
after eleven hours standing. I learned how to count
to ten in every language the dish-pit boys spoke, caught

every germ in the ballroom clearing dirty wine glasses,
pinning four between my fingers, balancing
                                                                           the fifth in my palm.