by Caroline Shea

Every three days, a beast like me
dies on the track.Starving, tangle-limbed,
I’m all legand bite. Pearl-grey gleam gone dull,
I run for no otherreason but the running. Long since lure-
wise, I play at predation.Clockwork jackrabbit. Gear-blooded hare.
The aim is not capture (impossiblealways) but pursuit. Something like the gravel
of a growl in the throat. Or the snapand glide of a body leaving earth
—however briefly—for the blue-starched strip of sky.
An instinct entered into memorylong before form finished with me,
unquestioned until the years and achesaccumulate, stopper movement like mud.
Not desire, but something deeper.Bred for the chase, I’ll always look better
in motion—an object in unisonwith its use. Don’t pretend you’ve never wanted to be
useful. Or rather, to be needed.A temporary prize: eventually, we’re all
incidental. Years from now, when my joints rustinto stillness, I’ll dream of the self swallowed whole
by its action, arthritic paws twitchingin sleep’s sunless hunt. Place your bets, gentlemen.
I won’t disappoint. Or forget.The sweat-stale pens. The crowd’s rough clamor.
The thin sheen between being necessaryand being used.

Caroline Shea is the author of Lambflesh. Her work has previously appeared in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Narrative Magazine, and Rogue Agent, and was longlisted for the Fractured Magazine Novel Excerpt Prize.