BIO
Steven Cordova’s full-length collection of poetry, Long Distance, was published by Bilingual Review Press in 2010. His poems have appeared in Barrow Street, Bellevue Literary Review, Callaloo, The Journal and Northwest Review. He reviews fiction and nonfiction for Lambda Literary. From San Antonio, TX, he lives in Brooklyn, New York.
My mother wakes to find herself on “wheel of fortune”
My mother
wakes to find herself on “Wheel of Fortune”—
a TV game
show she watches more religiously
than she
has ever attended mass.
“It’s your
turn, Sylvia,” Pat Sajak says. “Spin.”
But my
mother is 78, has never exercised
&
lacks upper body strength—
the pagan,
Herculean strength
any woman
needs to change her fortune,
the stroke
of lightening luck necessary to exercise—
at long
last—some power over religion,
over the
priest who told her sins
lead to
cancerous masses.
So, on
second thought, why should she attend mass
&
who’d want so much strength
so late in
life, her past spun
out—out of
control—behind her, the tunes
she used
to know forgotten, the irreligious
long list
of ex-
boyfriends
who failed to exercise
anything
but massive
dickheadedness? It was religion
told her
she needed their power.
And what
of fortune?
Pat Sajak
is getting impatient. She tries to spin.
Her head
spins.
She wishes
she’d exercised.
more. She
loves “Fortune”
almost as much as she fears cancerous masses.
God, if
you’re up there, give her strength.
Let
religion
be a
good-time religion,
one that
takes her by one hand & spins
her to a
position of flexibility & strength
(without a
Vannah White home exercise
program).
Let her build the muscle mass
necessary
to change fortune.
Strength
is a kind of religion.
The
fortunate go to spin class,
exercise
en masse.