Poem: September 17, 2026

Beater

You move your arm a particular way

and feel the slice of age in your shoulder

that you hyperextended in a fit of ambition

Saturday at the gym, 

And that isn’t even your biggest problem these days, 

no need to count the ways in which your body 

is failing you because everyday is a new betrayal. 

The tooth that needed to be pulled,  so that, 

now, eating popcorn hovers somewhere between 

unpleasant surprise and disappointment,

Or the bulging disc that ensures that reaching

down to pick up the cat bowl or crossing your

leg to tie your shoe is a cruel test of tentative

flexibility in a minefield of aches, 

Or the inexplicable thinning of the skin 

on the surface of your nose, which often results 

in serious bleeding from just an errant scratch, 

real bleeding in the middle of the day, 

in the middle of your class, and now you have to

spend the next 15 minutes dabbing at your

honker with a Kleenex, 

And let’s not forget the pills, organized as they are 

into their daily compartments. This one to tame the 

prostate, this one to clear the veins, another

to keep the food from burning as it travels

through the body, and another to tamp down

the breathless pounding of anxiety. Actually,

8 pills and 5 supplements in all, 

And what can you do? 

The machine has been running continuously 

for 58 years. Of course the gears are slipping. 

Of course the hardware is stuck or chipped 

or missing or hidden in its greasy patina. 

What can you do? 

The pit stops on the way can only replace the fuel 

And fill the tires that will push you smoking and sputtering to the horizon.