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Michel in the Diasporic Imagination
Revising, Resisting, Creating

The Jogger

James A. Emanuel

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1Jogging-in-place, she was,
balcony tiles sounding her count
(“800 yesterday,” she had begun,
my wristwatch adding what hers had known:
20 minutes).
Silent, her hands cupping her getaway breasts,
her jogging eyes bypassed the nearby beach,
probing the universe of my question:
“What’s most important,
how fast? how far? how long?”

2 “That depends.”

3Her honest voice dismissedd arithmetic,
gave on-the-spot philosophy no chance to speak
as words like rate and time and distance
jogged her memory like album pages turning:
ski runs in the Italian Alps, the Pyrenees;
underwater eyes of sudden fish in Cancun;
Peruvian vertigo on a mountain ledge near Saqsaywaman;
Jackie Robinson sliding into home-plate dust,
the crazed shouts of the Brooklyn crowd
piercing the Atlantic forever,
now jubilantly straight to seaside hotel, to balcony
where underwater snow with dust from vertigo
flashed blank into the piston beats on tile
(in actual Le Pouliguen, fishing and yatching port
on the “Love Coast” of Brittany).

4Still jogging-in-place, she seemed;
but space in her eyes, strectch in her fingers,
and second wind easing her pumping thighs
redefined jogging: nose high now,
ticketed first-class, destination optional.

5Traveler she was,
aloft on foam,
hushed in surf,
glancing homeward across the tide.

6Copyright © 2008 by James A. Emanuel. All rights reserved.

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References

Electronic reference

James A. Emanuel, “The Jogger”Transatlantica [Online], 1 | 2009, Online since 23 June 2009, connection on 16 April 2024. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/4284; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/transatlantica.4284

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James A. Emanuel

 

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Copyright

CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0

The text only may be used under licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. All other elements (illustrations, imported files) are “All rights reserved”, unless otherwise stated.

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