SIXTY DEGREES

Sixty Degrees has a left hand stuck in the jar. At the office, Sixty Degrees is the one who waters the plants and who’s always at the coffee pot with a crooked smile. Today, Sixty Degrees has a left hand stuck inside the jar, the opening of the jar is a hard glass handcuff. Sixy Degrees’ wrist is turning white, little brown hairs are pressed down and stuck there. Of course it’s Sixty Degrees who has a hand in the jar of blue papers, because Sixty Degrees has bigger hands than anybody. Sixty Degrees is seven feet tall. But Sixty Degrees does not have a bigger jar than anybody else at the office. And like everyone else in this office and everywhere, Sixty Degrees tried to make a good day today by grabbing an entirely new paper. Obviously, because of the hands the size of catchers’ mitts, Sixty Degrees has only been grabbing the blue papers at the top of the jar. Those papers got old quick. There is only so far that a giant zucchini-sized index finger and yam-sized thumb can reach into the same jar they’re going to give everyone else. So after a dark gray slip of paper and the horrible rain, and the black slip of paper on the day the sun didn’t come out at all and a furious moon came right in front of it to make a ring of fire in the sky, Sixty Degrees tried to make a difference. But got stuck. Sixty Degrees has been crashing a jarred hand into everything on this floor. Knocked a coffee mug right out of Kathy’s hand and onto the pretty silk blouse behind it. Sixty Degrees’ hands might bat plants and picture frames off of desks that touch the main walkway, legs up to everyone else’s shoulders and arms swinging low like pendulums. So Sixty Degrees has learned to use pants pockets to contain this problem. Except that a jar and a hand don’t fit where just the hand is supposed to go, and the jar is even more a weapon than a loose swinging hand.


Jules Lattimer