Circadia @ 4AM Rodney Sharkey | Professor of English, WCM-Qatar

Circadia @ 4:00 AM

Rodney Sharkey Poetry

Heart like a metronome Different branch of cryptochrome Sleep wake cycle But don’t drive For longdaysin Steven’s lab turn sleep into a system. Control yourself instead Amid gardens of Monsanto grass Where Arabadopis smoke shisha and reach for the sky from diagrammed pathways and, here, nurses work nights on COVID wards Their clocks unwound By the science of big business.

Circadian Rhythm is a body crock. Nurses and doctors and orderlies work the hours they’re given Without complaint. Let this be the poetic transcriptome rapier pointed words. . . unadorned. In the black of night the rhythm writes back says “it’s hard enough, Jack Don’t make it harder.”