Nalyne Lunati © 2004 All Rights Reserved
Nalyne Lunati © 2004 All Rights Reserved
The Incident
In lieu of sleep
I mimic the garden gnome
for hours. Heels deep
as crocus bulbs,
our elbows fastened
to our hips:
two old soldiers
practicing the slow
tai chi of dementia
in the wild pachysandra.
When a company of ants
stormed the hillock
of his calf, breached
his inner thigh
like a vein gone bad,
all varicose and on the move,
nothing. . . sheer stoicism.
I, for one, had to dance
through the hedges
and out into the road,
tour jeté, chassé
my terrycloth robe
unsashed and flapping
in what the police report described
as a moment of weakness
cloaked in exceptional grace.
Sean Nevin teaches creative writing at Arizona State University. He is also Assistant Director of the Young Writers Program and editor of 22 Across: An Anthology of Talented Youth. His poetry has most recently appeared in: Poet Lore, JAMA, 5AM, and The Ledge. He was awarded the Dorothy M. Hood Prize, an Academy of American Poets Prize and a creative writing fellowship from the Arizona Commission on the Arts.