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.
