Gymnos
Cooper Esteban

The intent initially was not exposure, but equity--

It is time, Sparta insisted, that victory was on the up-and-up. How to disagree? Suddenly even a farm boy from Alcala or Naxian Archos could find himself wearing the laurel. No one could fault the gods' wide bounty. Then Learchos noticed how the sweat descending a runner's torso, as he waited on the plynth, from armpit to flank, over rib and rib valley, was an exact replication of ground water over shelves of limestone, and the salt left behind the same color and texture; the flimmer of hair on the calf, when the wind lifted, an echo of the mimosa blossom, and--if bloodied--even pinker; the sheen of the buttock falling into the thigh like the lamb's oiled hide after the shears pass over. So everything changed: the incidental lack of clothes into nudity, the muscle's mechanics into metaphor, our wives into students of the shadow of a ball the sun throws onto a thigh.

1996 © 2003