"SCARS at the YMCA": poem by Geoffrey Garwick

© Copyright Geoffrey Byron Garwick.  All Rights Reserved.
 
 
My God, there are a lot of ways
To carve into a person.
In the locker room you see them --
Hacked, whittled, head-to-toe,
Back to front, sewn left, middle, right.
 
The remnants some seamster joined
Glisten with shower, sweat, tears.
Recall that these ridged meat fabrics
Are the ones surviving.
 
The Impersonal Trainer squints,
Stitching these outward signs
Into pieces of motley quilts:
Puce, onyx, pink designs.
 
Time not only will erode us,
It slices and dices
Like the flying fingers,
And heavenly droning patter
of those State Fair barkers
Who whiz their miracle knives
for the crowd's delight,
Dissecting bushels of veggies.
 
The randomly knit logic of
Flashing blades and hapless flesh
Flays carrots into edible sticks
And helpless skin to herringbone.
 
Incising the athletic Y
From stem to sternum,
From delts to pecs to abs,
For final workouts and glimpsing
All that intimate embroidery.
 
We run our laps.
We toga drape our towels.
We lift our weight.
We limp under glass-dark rowels.
Life maps our skin;
We laugh, shrug, cry our howls.