I am discovering with trepidation
that no age is old enough to learn about
the fragility of the human body.
The ripple of ribs flowing under the oar
of a collarbone. Heart underneath, beating
lopsided. Like a bird with a fractured wing.
What does it matter that I live in a swing
state when I can barely discern a nation?
My myopic mind’s eye... a system’s beating
pulse appears inconsequential to a bout
of arrythmia in my own red or-
gan. Does a vote cast extend my own body?
But I fill out my ballot. Sing the body
politic. Watch the neighbor woman’s child swing
her legs under the chair outside the booth. Or
maybe she was dancing the demarcation
between body;(s) and body;(pl). A quote about
choices ("Life is the sum of"- Camus) beating
in my mind, I see her pink clad feet beating
Choice’s shroud one day; the weight of a body
reduced to moment. Life's meaning now about
pen on paper. Four more years of her swinging
from this self definition; the duration
of plural breath. We are drowning in infor-
mation, but starved in knowledge. Stumbling left or
right hoping to choose wisely. Daily beating
down wisdom’s door in the itching temptation
to choose well. Make us proud of our one body.
To not be the one standing in the swinging
Door of truth forgetting what it’s all about.
Is it all about me;(s)? Or is it about
me;(pl)? Do I belong to myself? Any more
confusion and my profile might simply wing
into blue like asphalt lines off of beating
heat. Then I shall no longer be named body.
Just anybody. Call me Population.
And yet, something about the still-strong beating
carotid thrills. Or maybe it’s your body
adjacent, winging me to denotation.
© Sarah Fletcher, 2013
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| Voting in the United States Photo by Tom Arthur from Wikimedia Commons |
3 comments:
Interesting and complex. My mind actually read the last word as "detonation," which also works...
Funny, I did the same thing on my first reading.
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