Right leg, left arm, left leg, right arm
pump forward numbered torsos
with identifying peculiarities.
The House of Lords mounts an enquiry:
name, age, years worked, state of health
six thousand workers manufacturing
in a distant factory.
A crescendo of foot falls
and the onslaught arrives
threads drawing and twisting
bobbing breasts and bulging muscles
vapors boiling over bodies of all ages and sizes —
a mob of marathoners pours
through the capital’s streets.
By nightfall, tranquillity.
A quilted comforter,
imported from Macao,
covers aching limbs.
Folded neatly in a dresser,
an emblazoned t-shirt
memorializes the laborious hours.
Illumination from stars
two hundred light-years away
is obscured in the night’s
innumerable stories.