Needles To Say

She doesn’t take pleasure in my pain.

It’s just her professional domain.

The opportunity for brutality

is an occupational reality.

My crick-crack chiropractic.

Not cruel, just pragmatic.

Our vertebral spoken contract:

to realign my spinal tract.

*

At first I was cynical,

but she was clinical.

So I held my reservations,

during her evaluations.

*

Now she begins

her ministrations,

with analogue-digital

manipulations.

Crunch.

Creak.

My backbone speaks back.

A spinal pretzel,

dry and salty,

a twisting, crinkled multipack.

*

She’s slipping my compacted discs

skipping them from track to track.

Crick-crack.

Snik-snak.

Punctuating our sessions,

with her onomatopoetry,

my vertebrae, a query mark,

part apostrophe, all catastrophe.

And there, beneath thoracic rubble,

lies last year’s drunken tumble,

this year’s bedroom renovation,

and Tuesday’s bike lane altercation.

*

With the laying on of hands,

my spinal column she commands:

correcting my impious posture,

straightening my wayward stance.

*

But now she wants to needle me,

steely, drily,

intra-spinally.

Fine filaments penetrate,

twisting tips into my ache.

I do not count among my likes,

being transfixed by metal spikes.

But the problem bespeaks its own solution:

pins and needles for my pins and needles.

*

Then she completes me

with her finishing moves:

Pop.

Snap.

CLIMACTIC KERRRUNCH

(Is it bad I screamed?)

*

Finally she cracked it:

solved my coccyx acrostic.

Then applying verbal analgesic,

(“mmm that was a good one”)

with grim but courteous pleasantry.

I thank her for her efficiency

in tackling my deficiency.

*

As soon as I am able,

I liquefy off her table,

part jellyfish, part puppet,

fully disarticulate.

*

Gingerly I find my feet,

hunching, bowed, and in defeat,

she takes my payment with a grin,

"See you again!"

"Twice weekly,"

I nod meekly,

because—needless to say—

I’ll be back.