A Map of Empire

When was the last time your shoulders felt relaxed? Somedays you wonder if there aren’t bicycle tires and mixmasters, a junk heap of shoulds walking the tightrope of your trapezius. And let’s not even talk about your neck, how you think it might be out of line and you’ve started to crack it yourself, even though you know it’s bad. Just like crossing your legs torques your hips out of alignment. See, you just did it again.

Close your eyes for a minute and think of all the things you let into the soft tissue of your body. Car alarms, exhaust, pesticides and additives. Learned habits and gestures. That thing you do with your hands, or the way you cough in the morning when you haven’t had enough sleep, clearly from your mother. Or how a memory of your grandfather can lodge can itself in your elbow. That first time he took you out play tennis, whacking balls against the side of the garage till your arm hurt, and you had to stop. He’s dead now. Cancer. Worked at the mill twenty-six years. Twenty-six years, you put two and two together.

He always said empires are built on our backs, our shoulders, our necks. It’s no wonder you’re tired and want to go to bed. Somedays it’s enough just to stand and not weep at the headlines, to take the recycling out. To keep open, so that you can let one more good thing in.


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This is something I wrote for my theatre class, more of a monologue than a poem? Not sure if the title works, or if opening with a question is too invasive.