Her Body

Her Body

She lifts her body with her body,
moves her body with her body, sits down
on a hard mahogany chair that holds her body
while she tends to her body, as it is a creature
that needs be tended. Cutting lentils
and cooking rice to sustain her body,
boiling water, infusing safflower
that will quench her body, her body
moving her fingers (a part of her body)
with fine finesse and ease. She thinks
nothing of this marvelousness
that is her body; her body
is a sack which carries her brain around
which is also a part of her body,
wishes she could be without it, contemplates
the necessity of fingernails and earlobes.
She navigates the stairs with her body
that was built by bodies
with the help of machines and tools
that were imagined and designed by bodies,
who sweated, labored, debated
and shaped them alive like art. She enters
with her body, exits with her body,
works with her body, talks
with her body, embraces with her body,
treats it like a garden bush,
keeping it satisfied in its self-containing self.
Her body is the ultimate instrument,
that could even make other bodies
if she so chose; in her womb,
with her body, and the brief assistance
of another body, she can form a being.
(She does not consider much
how this is an attribute of gods.)
She lifts her body to reach the books
on the top shelf, lies her body with her body
onto her bed that cradles her body,
an idea her body came up with
to reconfigure itself. And so
she dreams in her body,
sees orbs and faces and feels pine needles
and loses time and place and law.
Her body is a distant echo; for seven hours
she is more than her body and she likes this,
she thinks this is a miraculous feat.
When she wakes she is a body again.
She rouses her body, walks her body
to the kitchen with her body,
to the kettle with her body, her body
a marvel, to be sure, her body
a majesty of cells and electrical impulses
and movements of bone and lore.
She counts her dollars, heads
to the grocery store, buys a vegetable body,
smells it, feels its leathery hide, wonders
if a potato is aware it has a body,
she walks alone the five city blocks
back home, considering only
the consciousness of the sky.

First published in Synchronized Chaos June 2022. This is this poem’s first appearance on this blog or anywhere else.