this pulse is just a reflex

September 28, 2011

published in Westminster College's journal "ellipsis" Spring 2012

this pulse is just a reflex

the man at the front of the room, the one with the funny legs,

crab-walks from side to side, his back to us, with stilted, aluminum steps,

scribbling the notation for conic sections and riemann sums, sketching

the curves of cosines with a lover’s care, but all we can see are his legs;

he stands on his heels so his knees don’t buckle

because his bones were twisted by blacksmiths, mistaken

for yet-to-be ironwork railing rungs that they attached

with ligaments made of copper, eggshell-thin.

outside my window, the distant whirr of cars on the highway

is the same sound as the soft hushing-rushing of felt against slate,

and if I shift my body, my joints all make small chalkboard sounds

as they click into place, imitating chiseled white ‘x’s and ‘y’s;

I am made of bronze or well-tempered tin,

my eyes forgotten in the midst of remedial metal

splints for arms and legs, smooth steel mechanisms for heart and hands,

and intricate clicking gears for the best of brains–

we might all be hephaestus’s automata, beautiful the way

calculus and clockwork are, and nothing more.