Working Out Again

At first it feels foolish, this sudden drive to drive somewhere

and run in place. How, either way, going nowhere quickens

the heart. To love anything is hard, is to lift its weight to failure.

Still, this metronomic click in a knee going up the stairs,

your black book of prescriptions. Watching infomercials before bed,

you almost believe parts of you could be incinerated,

torched, melted like sea ice in this climate of supplementation.

The less of you always a plus, an addition of years,

what the years bring – this creaking house, this August yard

with a peach tree bearing so much it almost kills itself.

They fall, polka dot grass with sunset, soft skulls frocked with newborn

fuzz like your beloved, her moon-head unwrapped beneath

a lamp’s pale gloam. The silver lining of sickness, she says,

this lessness of her clustered like erratic cells on

the porch: new pair of jeans, soft top with its delicious dip

of neckline. Deadlifting’s proper form, you know,

this bending over, straight backed, boxes brought in. This new

you needing more steps, strain looked forward to once,

its push-pull kind of intimacy. How, just before the knurled

bar of iron once crushed your convulsing chest, a pair of hands.

That just after, you sitting up on the bench, breathless, core

gone light as light. Almost gone.

Gus Peterson lives in the smallest town by land area in Maine. Poems are forthcoming with Prairie Schooner, Poems From Here, and the Deep Water series edited by Megan Grumbling. His first full length book, Male Pattern, was published in 2025 by Finishing Line Press. He decompresses by cohosting a monthly poetry salon at his local bread/bookstore. On Instagram @poeticswede