Julie

spiraling her wire fingers down
        on her signboard, concentration
        whirring like a gear in her eyes
        drool pooling on her safety-pin shoulder
        indicates, "Hello," then twists her fishhook
        wrist around the electric wheelchair control
        lurching indoors off the doorjamb.

        When I tie her bib at the dinner table
        the nest of knotted muscle in her jaw
        makes me wonder if she bites, but she eats passably
        with a swivel spoon, steering
        nearly all the blended food into her mouth.

        I learn to life her gently to the toilet chair
        avoiding the steel pin down her spine, to shut
        her chair off with a scold
        when slams against the walls
        in dark hysteria, and to distinguish
        between aigago and aigaigi.

        In the shower room, free
        of chair and signboard, she instructs
        me with her palsied hands in silent dialogue--
Wash my hair.  Soap my underarms.
        I will hold the nozzle--
        her slick, unattrophied breasts
        raised like chiding fingers.