Read by the author.

 

Again and again, we’ll put our shoulder
to the wheel
on which we’re broken. Stretched out at the heart
of a replica of the stone
sarcophagus we once believed to “eat flesh,”
we still have a straight

shot at the Strait
of Gibraltar. Where we first found a shoulder
to cry on. Long before the flash
of an iron-rimmed wheel
on a limestone
pavement. Where we first had a little heart

to heart.
Where we first developed our sense of the straight
and narrow. Threw the first stone.
First rubbed shoulders
with pigment traders. First made a color wheel.
First thought to flush

dyes through our own flesh,
so as to map what lies within our hearts.
First reinvented the wheel
that will run straight
only with a camber. First gave the cold shoulder
to a pigment trader. First chipped away at limestone

till it actually looked like stone.
First assigned a shoulder flash
to the Airborne Division. First deigned to shoulder
the blame for what happened in the heart
of Galicia. Long before we learned to lie straight
as a die, though the planets wheel

and wheel
about us. Before we first secured a lodestone
to a merchantman. First entered the home straight
where ore is crushed in the flosh
as the heart
is ofttimes crushed. First put our shoulder

to that great wheel. Saw Anu in the flesh.
First learned that a stone-faced doctor has the heart
to give it to us straight from the shoulder.