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, 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.