Nalyne Lunati © 2004 All Rights Reserved
Nalyne Lunati © 2004 All Rights Reserved
Fear
She’d fallen on the treadmill
and couldn’t hoist herself up.
I could have helped, pull the plug
or something, but I was upstairs
reading Homer, I think, the part
where Odysseus says, No man,
as she got hauled nowhere
at a steady 1.5 mph.
I don’t know how she managed
to keep the machine from swallowing her
like an escalator as she wrestled
against the current, up the side-holds
until she could switch the machine off.
How easy to give in to a 3-horsepower
motor with incline adjustment.
Like getting thrown by a horse
through a barbed wire fence. Or, one foot
in the stirrup, the horse dragging her
across the corral. For months
fear was a large, square bandage
on top of her foot, salve twice a day.
We left it untrodden after that, but there
were moments I swear it inched forward,
the sound of a stomach growling,
like a dog with the leash in its mouth,
saying whatever you’re doing, drop it,
it’s time for the ride of your life.
John Minczeski’s poems have appeared, or are forthcoming in Rattappallax, Crab Orchard Review, Notre Dame Review, Quarterly West and others. His book, Circle Routes, won the 2000 Akron Poetry Prize. He works as a poet-in-the-schools, and in colleges around Minnesota.