Perfect Timing

By | 13 May 2024
The work of the cloud is lonely and continuous.

                 The rider from Brazil unable to find

                 other work during lockdown. Whose

                 bike and capacity to ride remained unchecked,

                 lucky to leave with just a broken arm.

In such jocund company, what little thought to gaze.

                 The worker from Malaysia holding

                 someone else’s food when a car side-swiped

                 his scooter. For two and a half days,

                 he remained ‘yet to be identified.’

A platform host, the breezy, never-ending lines.

                 The driver who hit a woman finishing

                 her own fast-food job, who went on to

                 complete his delivery, and received $16.75.

                 Released on bail he went on to make a thousand more

                 deliveries that year.1

The flash upon the inward eye, a-flutter in the jig.

                 The rider hit by a truck as two orders appeared

                 on his app during the Saturday evening spike.

                 Deemed outside the twenty-minute delivery

                 window, his death left his family without

                 means to repatriate his body home.

When all at once, I saw a crowd whose golden coffers fill.

                 The worker from China who sent his salary

                 back to his wife and two children in their small

                 village. Ineligible, inevitably for workers’ comp.

What wealth the technology to me had brought.

                 The gig worker is thirteen times

                 more likely to present to emergency

                 than other cyclists. Thirteen ways

                 of looking at this economy, fifteen

                 food delivery deaths in Australia.

The manager stated that she was unaware

of the legal obligation to report a rider’s death.

                 But I know better now what companies keep,

                 and what account they should be made to make.

                 For oft, there comes to me a sight

                 of cyclists flying towards green light.





i.m.          Bojoy Paul

                 Chow Khai Shien

                 Burak Dogan

                 Akshay Deepah Doultani

                 Dede Fredy

                 Xiaojun Chen

                 Adil Abbas






    

  1.  This case is from the United States; all others occurred in Australia. ↩
    2.
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Ann Vickery is Professor of Writing and Literature at Deakin University. She is the author of three poetry collections: Bees Do Bother: An Antagonist’s Care Pack (Vagabond Press, 2021); Devious Intimacy (Hunter Publishers, 2015); and The Complete Pocketbook of Swoon (Vagabond Press, 2014). She is also the author of Stressing the Modern: Cultural Politics in Australian Women’s Poetry (Salt, 2007) and Leaving Lines of Gender: A Feminist Genealogy of Language Writing (Wesleyan University Press, 2000), and co-author of The Intimate Archive: Journeys through Private Papers (National Library of Australia, 2009). She recently edited The Cambridge Companion to Australian Poetry (Cambridge University Press, 2024) and has also co-edited Poetry and the Trace (Puncher and Wattmann, 2013). She is currently series editor of Palgrave’s Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics.

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