Chitra Ganesh, How to Assemble a Flying Car (detail), 2018, linocut on tan BFK Rives. Courtesy of the artist & Durham Press.
To the Sprinter
I wait now
for a better time, when you have lost a drop
of your beauty, when you might perceive better
what you leave
by dying.
If not from within the lung, then in some other external way, while you’reclimbing a rock,
I’ll kill
whatever, isn’t that what you say to one another—whatever—
youth is a bell, it announces itself
over the yards and lawns of others standing in the ordinary day
and its sound
reminds me of you, young runner—
blue, lit-up dash—
in the stadium race and darkness.
Christine Garren is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently The Piercing (Louisiana State University Press, 2006). A Los Angeles Times Book Award finalist and NEA Fellowship recipient, she was born in Philadelphia and has lived in Greensboro, North Carolina, since 1979. (updated 6/2010)