Sherif Abdelkarim
The First Days of Spring
οὔτε γὰρ διατριβαὶ τῶν ἐν ἱεροῖς οὔτε καιροὶ τῶν ἑορτασίμων οὔτε πράξεις οὔτ᾽ ὄψεις εὐφραίνουσιν ἕτεραι μᾶλλον....
For no other pastimes in temples gladden greater, nor occasions, nor deeds, nor sights.…
—Plutarch, Moralia (non posse suaviter vivi secundum Epicurum)
You drag gannets across shores fluorescent—aco-
lytes of Eris—this early, empty, portent March.
It’s eight-thirty, forty, cerule sunshine outside.
Your trance pulses off glass, granite, eucalypt.
Advance ventilators obliterate B.O.
Within this xystus, your laboratorium,
stranger agonists nurse a singular complex,
resistant to the winds of change yet how they teem,
alacritous sighthounds. Mandy has eros,
hunts Caster the Younger, their oakum and treadmill
fraternity your proof to Zeno’s paradox.
Elliptical gazelles mimic urnal perverts,
thwarted mid-chase. A saint prays for swift temptation.
Attent Memnon is Navy—says so on his merch.
Marina sports Northwestern accordingly.
Xenophon presses 360—stares resolute
at Stair Master—scales twelve thousand steps per diem.
Alpha films Alpha—unveils his live striations.
And you—what haven’t you gleaned from semaphore?
You’ve scanned this ageless train, tracked its repetitions,
Seen Vanity’s circus torture for the record,
weaned sad-manic neophytes toward stern addiction,
talked bosses’ bosses off steep ledges of decay.
Trainer, do you see them seek themselves in your strange
faces, mimicking afeared somatic cascades
from vast stretches, each their Trainer’s desert mirror?
Trainer, what obligates such rigid ritual,
such irreligious exercise, this golden morn?
Your cult immolates its champions, literal
hearts ill-quipped for what no workout can disturb, yet
hip thrust, then split squat, and spanned saults, still trophic torque.
Trainer, farewell. Spare no commandment on my sweat-
less gymnorobists. May no tempo sanction one
death pant. Brook no asphyxiation to viol-
ate your ’maculate, corporate idolatry.
Also by Sherif Abdelkarim: "Visions & Revisions"; a review of Jaswinder Bolina’s Of Color; a review of Irène Mathieu’s Grand Marronage; a review of Kazim Ali’s The Voice of Sheila Chandra
Sherif Abdelkarim teaches premodern literature at Grinnell College. He is the author of Tall People: Short Stories (forthcoming).
ISSN 2472-338X
© 2022