Poem

Donald Illich

ACHILLES

The feet have had it up to here
with the ankles, insisting on
green socks, when all they want
to feel is grass on a blank white
morning, dirt in a field that's yet
to heal. They also wish to stomp
hands, which get all the credit
for lifting drinks, and kick the face,
so handsome to the beloved,
a welcome matt she wipes her lips on
instead of toes. In the end they break,
not like hearts, but like statues' bases
cracking on haunted nights when
marble becomes flesh, horsemen
galloping from their pedestals to fight
stone cannonballers across town.
Tags hang off them, obstructing
their views of the unmoving body.
Why did it take revenge on itself?
the feet asks itself, now paralyzed.
Before their heels could kill Achilles,
he had left his shield in the tent,
invited enemy swords inside himself.

Donald Illich

Donald Illich has published poetry in The Iowa Review, Fourteen Hills, Passages North, Roanoke Review, Pinyon, and Cold Mountain Review. His work will appear in future issues of Nimrod, The Sow's Ear Poetry Review, Combo, and Del Sol Review. He received a 2006 Pushcart Prize nomination.

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