Sciatica sounds like the name of a philosopher 

I haven’t read yet          familiar with the concept 

runs in the family          inflamed by certain 

working  conditions

zippered live wires open

         the crook of my inner knee 

If ya got time to lean 

         ya got time to clean 

a friend says they never thought their chronic pain 

could be considered a disability 

                   hours               ballooning in the wrist

bitter calluses     divorced

from lichen     tight shoes 

             cobbled eggshells &knives 

I didn’t need to read 

         communist theory to know                     how strong I get

lifting other people’s boxes  I could give

my dissatisfaction a skeleton   carry her   

                   to sloughed horizons 

where fences give way               to ancestral colors tied 

         to manoomin         where monarchs lift 

from hot wheel husks                 planted away 

         from men who claimed             the word 

chiseled from illegible bone

         I weigh materiality in one hand   

                   a penny in the other

I know there’s another language

a language of verbs & blood

to describe what’s       happeningto us 

                   that boils 

within the fact                 of our bodies 

with whom I stand all day