“Body of Diminishing Motion,” which must have caught Florenz’s attention as title poem to the book she chose. I’m forever grateful to her, when, after several months of hearing nothing from CKP, I called and spoke to her. Florenz said that the post office hadn’t been forwarding all of the manuscripts since the move, that I should send it to her and if she thought Joan would like it, she’d give it to her. My great luck!
-Joan Seliger Sidney
Body of Diminishing Motion
Even the saguaros,
split by lightning
or disease, die in thick armor.
Even the cactus
can’t count on its red blooms.
For thirty years I denied
the day might come
when to walk across a room
would be too far.
Now shriveled,
my leg muscles are unwilling
to bear my body.
A climber’s legs
once, they stretched
across rock faults, hiked
the hard way up a dike.
I slid the rope
through my fingers,
rappelled my body
rock to rock.
Back and forth
I crawl across the room,
synchronizing
opposite leg and arm,
trying to train my nerve cells
to reconnect, as if
there’s method to disease.
The voice inside
guides: Test of faith.
Don’t hope, expect.
Hope leaves room
for doubt.
Articles, stories, books—
every day I read how
people healed themselves.
In every cell memory.
Every pain, every emotion
imprinted and passed on.
Grandparents I never knew,
their bodies tossed
into a pit for Zurawno’s Jews.
Last night in bed
my bowels erupted, spewing
across my sheets and thighs.
Was I my great-aunt in Auschwitz,
dysentery draining her skeletal body?
So many voices
through me trying to speak.
Shechinah, female face of God,
free my body from their shadows.
Let me tell their stories and mine.
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