The Chain
Rent from DeepDyve- The Chain
Maybe inside all our bodies is the fine body of an ultramarathoner, a body that needs
to be lubricated against itself, that needs to be doggedly watered and hand-fed
and salted periodically with tablets no bigger than the sori of a fern, that just
needs the steel-banded calculus of trust to take it and take it good, the body, yes,
your own soft body leads by a leash along the rocks flanging the dark pines, the body
your body jerks to a stop in the rough clearing, hands on shoulders on knees
on unblessed ground, the body your body sledges with rusted stakes through the palms,
achilles, nipples, that drives a chain rippling through the intestines with the blindness
of water approaching the dam, blindness of boys at the edge of the woods cinching [End Page 94]
themselves into some dusty unnameable shape—threat or surrender with its parallel
lines—toward a voice with a sledge in its hands and a chain in its teeth calling
come and get it brother, come and get it. [End Page 95]
Elyse Fenton is the author of the poetry collections Clamor and Sweet Insurgent (forthcoming from Saturnalia). Although she has spent much of her life as a scrum half, shortstop, or point guard, she has very few poems to show for it.
