Showing posts with label body. Show all posts
Showing posts with label body. Show all posts

Friday, January 15, 2021

Toes

 [second version]


They're pudgy, failed claws,

private nubs that often

go public. We encase them

like jewels, divas, or prisoners, 

let them out for fresh air


only sometimes. The curling


of toes, one knows, is 

a practice that migrated

from branched peoples

hanging around long ago.


When people say, "Kick up

your heels," they seem

to mean nothing.


Heel/toes, heel toes:

onward the masses walk hard

on hard urban surfaces.

It's the economy, stupid.


Our dogs is tired,

our gods are remote,

this is the greatest age

of toenail paint, 

and I am the owner 

of a hammer toe,

a hard name for a

soft undertow. 


hans ostrom 2015/2021


Monday, May 11, 2020

From a Diary of the Plague Year (14)

I've been saying
encouraging words
to my body. Telling it,
without evidence (this
is a national trend),
that it will fight the Virus
just fine if things should
come to that. My body

doesn't listen to me. I'm
unreliable. The body
has its own life, writes
its own memoir. It is
a republic of cells
devoted to an oxygen cult.
I'm not privy to the council's
deliberations on this virus.

Many times I have been
told, "Listen to your body."
Well, my body talks
too much. It's my turn
to be heard.


hans ostrom

Thursday, February 28, 2019

Briefly

Many molecules
briefly in circulation
so as to articulate
a body-plan, which is
embedded in the material
itself (which is like wood
turning itself into
a house): that's me,
temporarily.


hans ostrom 2019