On the gospel channel, bodybuilders:
one rolls up a fryingpan, one uncurls
a horseshoe's steel Omega; one lays hands
on a pair of Georgia license plates, rips
them in half. Leather weight-belts, talc,
sweat, glutted veins in bicep, neck;
gnashing teeth, grunts bowel-deep, pecs
that surge and stress the words
on t-shirts: GOD MADE YOU TO WIN.
It's more than just a ten-foot log
one of them cleans and jerks above his head;
nor do they believe the single-mindedness
of the man hammering stones with his forehead
is enough. That something other moves
in the knuckles of the man clobbering nails
into hickory with his fists is concrete
proof: here is Grace made tangible.
In a motel room, the thumb of a man
clicks along the remote, looking
for something to distract him from one
moment to the next. Above the neon lot,
a few stars visible, spiked into the dark;
bats lift themselves in jagged wreaths
around the streetlamps. All day, with one foot
and one hand, he moved 2000 pounds of Chevy
across four states. If he can lift tomorrow
his eight pound head from the damp pillow
it will be enough. The sun could do no more.
Copyright William Wenthe, from Not Till We Are Lost, LSU Press, 2003
First published in The Southern Review 35, 2 (Spring 1999)
Reprinted in Pushcart Prize XXV: The Best of the Small Presses (Fall 2000)