The Rec Center

by Dylan Bourne

I, um,
am folded at a gray table
in the middle of the Rec Center.
Drinking fountains give
gray water here, and time is the basketball hoop
forgotten on the ceiling above the indoor hockey courts.
Students dart through my peripherals
like big fish.
I am not working out.
I’m swallowing the polished floors.
Phantom treadmill legs trade places infinitely
while heads stay still. There’s a bouncing
sound straining to be music. Right now
I need Lake Michigan
to burst through these windows
and drown all of this. Wipe it out.
Bench presses. Tombs
of people freaking out, floating.

Dylan Bourne is an MFA poetry candidate at the University of Idaho from south-central Wisconsin. He attended University of Oregon, where he studied philosophy and poetry. Dylan is the editor of the Reviews and Interviews branch of Fugue, and he’s currently working on a book of poetry.