On an early warm afternoon of March
Before the warmth gives way to the Summer
And the light and air of April compete
I was to snap cut
My rotator cuffs
Or tear them,
Whatever those things
Were.

Inclined on a rotated bench,
Bent back,
Supported by itself through contraptions
In its design,
Freeing me to focus
On the
Dumbbells to be lifted above
And rotated,
To enhance front deltoids,
Clavicular Head Pectoral Muscles,
And
Anything
That found itself in between
Through its evolutionary tract.

The weights would spin in the air, as a disk,
Suspended
By muscles it was not yet
Supposed to entertain,
Just not yet now,
But are necessary for the process.
Their trajectories cross the vertices
Of the Ursa Major,
As the twin weights
Imitating Messier 101.
In its tendrils the dust progresses in
Pilgrimage
Around that gravitating
Center,
Of which everything falls into,
Whereas the fastened objects in my hand
I was to lift,
Lower and elevate
To reaches far beyond where eyes could see
So that the
Naked eye fails to resolve:
Perhaps then a radio antenna,
Or
Constellations of satellites, without,
Can scan pulses and retrieve images
In succession,
To put them together,
To a model that captures the tumors
That retard the ellipses of planets.

The weights slowly skidding
Off of their path
Their fall
Circumscribing my boxed chest,
And then my smarting hands
Let go of
Them,
And they fall
With a thud
As if to warn
All parties interested and those not
What would become of them,
Should they be me.

A frightened friend rushed to me from his stall—
While the whole world
And everyone in it,
As they appeared to me from the mirror
A view in landscape,
Twice the half-angle
View I am inured to
That’s so common to me—
He warned me
What damage awaits
My cuffs
Should I persevere
when the weight derails,
My gaze tracking his rush from the mirror,
His body approaching
In half-angles.

Sabah Alsalim,
March, 2024.