Feet, you feel too much; no
wonder you
often choose the callous way.
How else can you
walk over pebbles and asphalt, bric-a-brac
& shattered
vodka bottles in the alley? You know
the orgasm
of Epsom salt bath,
the yes!yes!yes!
of hot warm towels wrapped
around your ankles
after a sandalwood massage. You know
the delicate dance
of phalanges and metatarsals,
ligaments, tibia, & talus.
You, club feet, refuse to plyometrics; you know
the danger of the jump.
To gambol is not your game.
You stay
close to the ground, always
a little curved,
always draping like papier-mache.
You wiggle
your toes to feel that pleasurepain stretch,
the muscle memory
of tendons & bones kneaded like dough, poured
into plastic casts.
Your supination is prayer
for an angled appetite,
a reminder that we all must turn,
must all recalibrate
overandoveragain, the magnetic
metal sap
underneath us all imperceptibly swishing
in compass gyration,
refusing that silence that rings at the last
twist of the cabasa,
cylinder and steel beads always turning,
always rounding
into an infinite amen.
*A dithyramb is a wild, enthusiastic, and irregular poem. The Hebrew word is shiggaion, and it’s found in Psalm 7 and Habbakuk 3:1.
