American Labor

Turns out, if I’m average, I might live 

the same number of years

I’ve already lived 

again. Give or take half

a decade. So, here I am,

Googling what makes men

average. One study showed

women consider eighty percent of all men

to be below, looks’ wise, although, 

statisticians agree 

the number skews

because dating 

average American men carries 

such a high mortality rate.

If I’m average, I’ll see my sons

turn thirty, wreck two-point-five

cars, accrue 

four thousand

dollars’ worth of credit card debt

each. Some mornings, we end 

up worshipping something. I tell my boys

the least earned 

Boy Scout merit badge 

in 2013

was American Labor, and that nobody has to find them

beautiful for them to be 

decent. I promise them the average person

takes seven hundred million 

breaths in one life

and that, with each inhale, we harvest

ten-thousand bacteria, five-thousand viruses,

a couple mushroom spores. To think, 

to be so obtuse, so mediocre,

counting down what ends us 

only by the year.