As/Is







4.13.2005



I go to the gym to watch the O.C., resenting,
of course, the full stop in that name forcing
my sentences to an untimely end but if I
think it I don't show it.

Nor do my other
Sisters of the Stairmaster, leaning forward
at the shoulders although it must be
bad for the rotator cuffs, headphones
stuffed into their ears

mostly clean white iPod eAr bUds.
I should know.
I have the same.

Last night the girl
next to me in the sweater
of one of the colleges
confessed she was just wasting time.

Oh Lord, how I loved her accent.
I wanted to interrogate it
to make a poem.
But, like the buttresses of muscle
in your arm (I can name most of them,
and work the bigger ones into something rounder &
harder) that skill
softens if you don't use it.