Mary Morris
Modern Colosseum
There is harmony in the weight machines
tone in these muscle men straining
their deltoids and the beautiful
abdominals cleaning up as Joey works
on his buff until it appears as if
he is polished stone slick with sweat
while Billy of the silver-pierced nipples
flanked by tattooed arms of sharks
keeps working on an image of a saint
punctured with pain a martyr inked
with contrition whereas Leon flexes
on the bench press in front of a flickering
TV face thin and drawn from HIV
To remain fervent as gladiators
wrestling through an architecture
of perfect proportion the men
become a sermon of the body
their physical address a homily
Mary Morris’s poems are published in Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Los Angeles Review, Massachusetts Review, Boulevard, and Poetry Northwest. She is the author of three books of poetry, winner of the Arizona-New Mexico Book Award, Wheelbarrow Books Prize, and the Rita Dove Award, and has been invited to read at the Library of Congress, which aired on NPR. Most recently, Kwame Dawes selected her poem for American Life in Poetry.