Weak Core
I have hauled laundry, sucker-punched Tuesday,
bent, switched and twisted,
and my spine despises me.
You have a weak core, she says.
Should be pulling up and in, she says.
Imagine a stuffed burlap sack half-hanging
from a squealing sapling, the
whole massive hellish orb
on which we teeter exhorting it
groundwards. Rip-snap
and the pre-teen tree gives, bark
pinging like fish-scales, fibre
parting from fibre, sap beading,
the unwieldy sack slumping
as Earth pops its nickel six-pack.
Wanna spot for me, sucker?
I do stretches, I say, take screen-breaks,
eschew the hoover. I have
shiatsu balls. An orthopaedic mattress.
She laughs at the futility.
This way to the pulleys, she says.
Nina Parmenter is a part-time poet from Wiltshire. Her work has been published in Lighten Up Online, The New Verse News, Snakeskin Poetry and Light. She posts poems and poetry-related thoughts at www.facebook.com/itallrhymes.