Stephanie Glazier
THREE ASANAS
One.
This requires a certain kind of trust, trust that you’ll be kept safe here. Nothing will happen she says.
When I look up from down dog she repeats herself and for an instant the passing train is coming through
the building, the walls folding like sheaves of paper— but I believe her. We all do and sink our
foreheads to our knees, bottoms to feet.
Child’s pose.
Two.
The purpose of yoga is to make the body a proper vessel for the soul.
Folding, I match my palms to the half moons of calf.
Now, my bottom is my top! and my mouth opens to laugh
at my feet, or the thought.
Three.
Soften any tension – in your belly, your chest. Just let everything go and rest.
Corpse pose. The feet turned out, the palms cast up. I want to say that time doesn’t exist here, worry
diaphanous as the warm air.
But I’m not that woman. Not yet: the light beats at my eyelids, my breath.
by Stephanie Glazier
Stephanie Glaizer, who is acting director of MSU’s RCAH Center for Poetry, was the first poet to participate in the Poem/a/Day on Lansing Online News and was instrumental in helping make it so successful. She is a graduate of MSU and has an MFA in poetry from Antioch College.
