Jane Shore

WORKOUT

by Jane Shore

My sister is doing her exercises,
working out in my husband's study.
The rowing machine sighs deeply with every stroke,
its heavy breathing, like a couple making love.

She's visiting from Iowa
where the cold weather is much worse

When she was ten, I'd hear her
strumming her guitar through the bedroom wall.
She'd borrow my albums - my Joan Baez, my Dylan -
and sing along,
shutting me out, drawing me in;
imitating my hair, my clothes,
my generation.

I used to feel sorry for her
for being eight years younger.

She opens the door a crack, and surfaces
in earphones, and wearing pink bikini panties
and a lover's torn T-shirt.
Strapped to her hands are the weights
that weighed her suitcase down.
Her thighs are tight, her triceps shine,
her body is her trophy.

The night she arrived, we sprawled across my bed,
her cosmetic bag spilled open
and she shadowed my eyelids violet,
demonstrating the latest tricks;
the way I used to make her up
on those nights she watched me dress for dates,

watched me slip into my miniskirt,
my sandals, my love beads.
Now she's no longer in love with me,
and eyes me pityingly,
triumphant, her expression the same as mine
when I watched my mother
examine her face in the magnifying mirror.

She's got to keep in shape.
She's a performer, it's her business
to look beautiful every night.
Sometimes when she begins to sing,
men in the audience fall in love.

She's warming up in the shower;
the tile walls amplify her voice.
Safe, for once, under temperate rain.

Like a dress handed down
from sister to sister,
in time, one body will inherit
what the other has outgrown.

-Jane Shore, Music Minus One