This poem by Patty Nash stays close to thought-as-it-happens, parceling out its descriptions of embodiment to yield low-key suspense. “My Bad Knee” feels out the everydayness of managing pain, narrating the re-encounter of domestic, embodied spaces and objects that we thought we were familiar with, now mapped by fascia and nerves. Form, too, is dimensional and relational as knees, joints, joinings, hinges—on, around, under, and between—inhabit enjambed lines and thought-asides extending body and mind in the room. The horror-meets-corniness of exercise and physical therapy abuts the horror-meets-eros of the domestic, held together by a will and a style that is buoyed by the scientific microfictions of medicine. How does diagnosis shift perception? The poem captures a long past that unfolds in a dilated moment of self-care and exploration while withholding the future it gestures towards: this exercise might be preparation. – The Editors and the Poetry Staff
My Bad Knee
I was feeling dimensional.
I was swiveling
between rolling on a
neon ball
and cylinder, doing self-
myofascial
release.
I was diagnosed
and instructed go where
it felt tight
and not spasmodic,
and then wiggle
around a little.
And then wait.
Some of my appendages were
as close to the floor
as someone’s
could credibly
get. That’s when I saw
your leather shoes
(beige dust receptacles)
under the red plush
un-upholstered
chair. I don’t have to continue, do I?
You can guess
what I did next.