Lisken Van Pelt Dus

Healthier Lives

Build healthier lives through exercise,
the pamphlet vaunts, much healthier
than raising legs across the door
to block the three-year-old or
doing shoulder shrugs to hold the phone
while stirring mashed potatoes
on the stove and craning (stretch
those trapezoids) to check
the website that the nine-year-old has found
and so much healthier than running down
the stairs to get the laundry,
hauling it back up, and folding it
(remember how the arms spread in a jumping jack)
and here comes Dad
red from the gym and oh
so tired.

Lisken Van Pelt Dus is a poet, teacher, and martial artist gratefully making her way through the sentences of her life in western Massachusetts.