REHAB
by
Anthony
DeGregorio
“In
keeping with
the situation!”
(—Mrs.
Dilber,
Ebenezer Scrooge’s housekeeper)
Phase
1
In the rehab gym
the exercise physiologist
asks a patient if
he knows where he is.
His answer may be
ambiguous.
Delivered in a deep-dream-distant
voice muffled as sleep
talk,
the inaudibility
exacerbating the ambiguity.
Neither patient nor
staff member understands or grasps the
meaning
or its myriad implications
of life, death, and/or time.
Phase
2
On another exercise
bike a participant
(to my left, I believe)
wonders aloud,
very concerned, why
she is not making any progress
vis-á-vis distance,
i.e., lessening the space
between the locker
room and herself
as she frantically
peddles faster.
What would normally
be considered
just a snickered
insensitive remark
someone makes about
her confusion
takes on greater
meaning, existentially speaking.
Phase
3
It becomes increasingly
unclear whether my legs
are peddling forward,
backward, vertically, or horizontally.
Until the bike appears
to lift off the floor
and flip over, somewhat
changing my perspective.
In keeping with the
situation
of stationary motion
and travel
in alternative dimensions
I ask for a neurologist
specializing in colors,
specifically those
of speed,
mass, and time, and
practicing exclusively
therein,
as I silently compose
a formal inquiry
re: the future and
the past,
completely ignoring
the present,
as well as place
and space
in my mentally accommodated
document
destined for interplanetary
fame.
Anthony DeGregorio’s writing
has appeared or is scheduled to appear in various publications, including Libre,
Abandoned Mine, Italian America Magazine, Aromatica Poetica,
Bloom, Nowhere, Wales Haiku Journal, Polu Texni,
and So It Goes: The Literary Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library.
He taught writing at
Manhattanville College for twenty years, and in another life or two or three he
worked in various capacities for the Department of Social Services, much of
that time while teaching at night. Prior to that is anyone’s guess, but don’t
let that stop you.
