In the Women’s Locker Room

Over the tops of the lockers,

I hear a woman

talking, talking.

Just the trail of her sentences,

sentencing,

sentencing her listener

to the silence of a tree.

While she, like an animal

nose to the ground,

follows the trail

of her own words, her scent.

Tense, she is on the prowl:

she is talking about

her body, her body.

She can’t decide

if she wants to be

fat with no wrinkles,

or skinny with wrinkles.

But for now, she says

she just wants to keep

her muscles in tone:

her muscles intone to her:

“Be somebody;

Be some body.”

“In the Women’s Locker Room” is from Talking Underwater (Wind Publications, 2007).