Singing, Signing

So this is my Lindenburg mimic that we did earlier.  Not sure about all of the images, and I think I need a better title, but other than that I think its ok.

The hand that pulls from the spider den, the hand

that gathers grasses and oil, that drops its pen

to grope for shattered glass.  The hands covered in old

worked skin, but squishy with baby fat

under the calluses.  The hands, dark and soft,

dimpled in blond freckles.   The lithe hands,

the hands with a squareness in the wrist, a dexterity

born in years of pounding.  A regained satin in the fingertips.

A thumb red and swelling.  Here’s a mud-stained hand, a

pricked hand, a hand nobbled and broken with dreaming,

a hand caught between the door and the flame—stuck with

the scarring. The hands that throw coins, and palm coins,

hands that sting and retreat from the signing.

We pass hand to hand, our lives

written on our finger pads.  Sweat.

This hand is hard, crumpled like pages in a writer’s trash bin,

fingers dancing in a rattle-word twitch.