Brian Campbell: My Right Foot & My Left Foot

MY RIGHT FOOT

Long bound by hard leather

the toes now hook

rightward

warped by the torque

of a hundred million steps.

Each knuckle a knoll

worn bare but for a few lone hairs,

whip-like reeds on desert dunes.

Under pale, tender skin

blue rivers fork,

wriggle, worm-like

over the top tendon’s ridge, down

to the arch’s curve, flattened

by more than forty thousand miles

of pound and thud,

enough to go around the Earth

from bedroom to kitchen, front step, bus stop

and back again.  All bending

to the flanging bulb of heel,

browned, creviced, callused

by numberless pivots and turns.

MY LEFT FOOT

Originally arched

like a raised eyebrow

you’ve been bowed, bent

to the level of your companion:

severely pronated, the doctors say.

The price of your conformity:

the tendons and muscles

wrapped,  stretched,

hunkered downward

with each thumping

step. Supine one,

you are the best foot

I should have put

forward.  Now

pain   flares up

from the heel’s

inflamed ligature,

a constant throbbing

awaiting scalpel and a

graft.

*

Brian Campbell is a poet, singer-songwriter, editor, translator, and teacher. His third full-length collection, Shimmer Report, has just been published (Ekstasis Editions, 2015). He is also the author of A Private Collection (Sky of Ink Press chapbook, 2014),Passenger Flight (Signature Editions, 2009), Guatemala and Other Poems (1994) and Undressing the Night (Editorial Lunes, Costa Rica, 2007), a translation of the selected poems of Francisco Santos.  ... about BrianCampbell   ... about Shimmer Report