"Negotiations" by Morgan Askenaizer

Negotiations

When my mother does
the treadmill she
watches taped
Harvard lectures on

argumentation in
order to better deduct
and induct the five foot
eight frames of her

daughters to the power
of seventeen.

So as she jogs
farther away into
the heavens,
she is quantifying
and qualifying the

space between the
perfect parabola of
truth and her
running sneakers.

It is after a fight we
push parallels against
her bedroom door,
my mother
repeats what she's
learned from the tapes:

No, No, No, No, No

When a wolf wakes
my sister up in the
middle of the night
she syas it sounds
like a spirit cursing
the treadmill of eternity or, perhaps,
the fact that it can
no longer wear
running shoes.

The spirit of my
mother moored
to the door, needs
neither shoes nor argument--

get out, she says,
get out of this room

but I have never
been in.


Morgan Askeneizer studies at The Eastman School of Music.