by Jen Fitzgerald
for Staten Island
Double-ended barge ferries workers
from line to line. Pushing the throngs
against the bows, pulling the tow
by ropes thick as legs. Splintered
benches rub their pants bare, cold-bitten
skin, mist tainted hair. Three pronged
wake; ferry cuts harbor waters thrice.
Take in the heights, skyscrapers straddle
subterranean entrances. Trains wait,
pistons snorting air down tunnels,
third rail hums. Double-ended barge
retreats with stragglers, third shifters
and heat seekers; drags back the gears
of industry’s dead clock. A young man
dusted in sheetrock sleeps through
dawn blooming over the harbor before
a nightstick taps his leg. Tug boats
dry docked or in the slip, line Richmond
Terrace, waiting to chug the girth
of belabored boats across greened
water. Backs break, many lie
asleep. When pipes are too heavy,
taut tendon will snap, roll up
into muscle. The maimed train
machines to replace them; hydraulic
punches slice and bite at skin
in the name of the Holy Day’s Wage.
The invisible make you possible,
see idleness as undoing. Double-ended
barge ferries itself in a bottomless
succession of laps and gasps, barely
afloat. The lungs of the city pull us in,
blow us out over Harbor to Exile Island.
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.
