By: Gertrude J. Fraser
My feet are swollen
Toes pressed tightly together
A peculiar sensation of skin jammed against skin
My fingers burn
Toes splayed too firmly on the floorboards when I go barefooted
My symptoms started during the Spring of 2020
In the world of quarantine and teach from home
Too many hours spent sitting in Zoom meetings and time flown by
Shoulders compressed—writing power—point lectures in a chair meant for eating quick meals
And sitting to grade papers, sending and reading texts, emails
How worrying to feel my body shifting into an uncomfortable sausage mode
I think its diabetes
Excess salt, old age
Creeping through the arteries
Slow to make its circulatory way
To the far extensions of toes and fingers
I think the swelling is a work injury, too much sitting still
Blood and cells pooling
I am a white-collar worker at the university founded by Thomas Jefferson
He could not have imagined me
Working digitally
Reaching into the global spread of living rooms, home offices, a table in the kitchen
Students and colleagues wait
I am getting paid
But I can imagine the working people—on Monticello Mountain—owned, unwaged
The left pinky slashed from a slip of the knife, slicing okra for the stew
In the scalding outdoor kitchen
Annexed to, but not really inside the main house
I can imagine frost burned tips of ears, noses, toes
Too long exposed to the freezing rain and harsh wind sweeping across the mountain
But wood has to be gathered and animals fed
-in the morning and then just before the day loses light
Cold or heat or smoke
Respiratory conditions can put an enslaved woman, man or child in the ground
And I peek into the nail factory—Jefferson’s dreams of industry-brought to reality by /for FREE
Un-FREE labor
Acres of FREE land endowed by Peter.
It is the real nail factory
Not the reconstruction tidy one
Approved by architects and brought to light by archeologists
I know hot iron can singe flesh, burn the hair from forearm
And a quick turn to reprimand the young boy pumping the bellows
Yields crushed fingers, blood-filled and later inflamed
Poulticed and bandaged
I imagine the fear of error, the fear of death
We make work meaningful
A finely turned chest of drawers
A pound of nails
A meal to be remembered
A new digital course coming live in two weeks
Jefferson’s vision of industry and intellectual pursuits of a freed mind
The sorcery of stealing and making humans into property
A brutal kind of alchemy
Our bodies bent to work bear the wounds of labor
~Gertrude J. Fraser