Disciplining the Body

What emerged from the cellar

of the abandoned summer house

was a fox cub,

alive

and mewing, though motherless.

It cried, unheard, while we shot

the Glock. And when Thom

threw open the hatch door,

I wasn’t thinking of the farm dog.

It rushed down the stairs,

throttled

a blur of scarlet.

The pup’s bones

twisted, snapped,

not a significant noise,

not what I’d expected.

Then it happened like this:

we were quiet,

and you walked past

the dogbane to where

the pup lay heaving,

slipped the safety and fired.

Not solemnly,

but suddenly steeled.

And after the recoil,

you let that stiffness

slide off you

as if the crack

echoing the fallow acre

toward the silo,

its grain door

rusty, eddying with the wind,

cracked you too.

The living

leave their ghosts behind.

Later, we walked

through the turnrows.

And later, Thom married Kayla.

The day of the rehearsal

the wedding party

practiced Thriller

in the church’s basement.

Vine left, said Thom,

now upper body rock,

cross step left.

Thom said to watch you.

He restarted the song,

and you shambled forward,

head ticking: one, five, seven.

Your shoulders,

a yolk,

bobbed

in perfect phrase

to the double-beat of the chorus,

an impossibility,

pure

muscular alchemy,

some unthinkable level

of control.