Tom Dvorske
Bipedal
This is where it gets me. Right here.
Between the big toe and the shoe. Left
foot. The blister now the size of a rice grain.
I am a worm clinging to a brass
hook, suspended above
a sandstone ledge.
She says, "You can't live without me."
I suspect, given the certainty
of her utterance, that she's speaking
to the one who looks like me, who
when I move, seems to follow
an eighth of a step back, or to the right—
The one who gives me blisters.
It's not so much that I desire
anything in particular, it's that
when one has a hangnail, he
cannot resist tearing, till
blood emerges—the head of a pin—
solidifies, protects the wound.
The woman at the shoe store tells me
the insoles come in one size only.
You just measure the foam pad
with the foot-shaped placard according
to your size. The one who tells me,
"I can't live..."
jams her foot into a boot.
The wait is long
and the assault
could come from anywhere.
Last week driving to the lake,
windshield wipers on the fritz, sweeping
the window every third or fifth beat,
I decide it's too cold to fish anyway.
Park the car. Smoke in the rain.
The way the smoke curls about her neck.
Dark water below. Above, a brownish
light. In the interim, green.
I wonder if people with prosthetic
feet wear insoles? I'm not playing
fair, anymore; tongue and toe
out of tune. "You're better than that,"
she says, opening her umbrella.
I think he's picking my pocket.
The barb pierces my seven hearts.
Portraits of Man-in-Question as Stump
I. (I picture...)
An ordinary stump
with a man's head atop
bark damp and moss-covered
looking forlorn.
II. (You picture...)
A stump, the height of a man...
A tree stump in a modern office
unable to reach anything,
stolid on a windless plain.
III. (Stump considers itself from the God-perspective)
The higher I reach
the deeper I feel my roots.
IV. (Man as Stump as Balding Man)
I wonder if what little hair I comb
rings around my scalp
testifies to my healthy living?
V. (Stump as an Act of Charity)
Along the overgrown berm I grow
a city of ants, hollowed veins
lead to the queen's nest.
VI. (Man as a Series of Mistakes)
It was the wrong tree the tree
we diseased the tree
we did not take precautions to save
the tree that's given up its shade.
VII. (Stump as Fixity)
Were the stump not here
we would have to invent it:
the measureless field melts
for want of a pin, a button,
something to affix it in time.
VIII. (Stump as a Figure in a Poem)
I woke to hear you breathing
through a long tube of sickness:
the stump was the only
place to sit.
IX. (Man as More than the Sum of his Parts)
Imagine the grandeur of my history,
the depths of my lineage:
The sound of seeds splitting deep in the earth.
X. (Stump as Facial Feature)
He was a _____ man, with a
stump above his eyebrow.
XI. (Stump Reconsiders itself from the God-perspective)
My roots can never go deep enough.
XII. (Man feels like Stump feels like)
What's the use in moving anyway?
All I have dreamed of has brought me to this.
XIII. (Stump as mark of discipline)
Behold the stump
as it was intended without intention
beneath the well, its roots
the pump of invention.
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