I AM A NATURAL WONDER
After Ishmael Houston Jones’s Without Hope****
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*********************This is a pas de deux for a man
Who takes a cinderblock as his partner.
*********************He kisses the brick, sets it on his back.
One shoulder leers at the ground.
*********************He walks like a man condemned
To lift his hammer and break stone.
*********************When he drops the brick it crumbles
And the dancer breaks his silence.
*********************He names each chunk for a bone.
Names them again for fractures.
*********************Before stillness claims the stage
The man steps out of the light
*********************And leaves the brick for his body.
Often my dreams are adagios.
*********************I dance the part of the cinderblock.
When I wake my hands look wrong.
*********************What they touch I name for myself.
Name again for how I use it.
*********************The splinters in the floorboards
A spider I drown in the sink—
*********************These exhaust me. I carry my trash
As one cradles a wounded arm.
*********************I bring it outside and a plastic bottle
Skitters its way across the lot.
*********************If I picture bending down for it
Touching too becomes my hands.
*********************There it goes into the street.
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To learn more about Allyson Paty, read her poems on Low Log.