The Brooklyn Rail

hands

when i dream i dig half-moons
into my palms—deem them
bone & vein
map, blood flow
landscape. home
to what my beloved calls
my deep beds, blotted
with calcium deficiency
blooms. hands
you hold each day’s
nourishment: purple
melatonin gummies, photos slipped
from album sleeves, marigold
dyed fabric set
on the altar, nearly dialing
my mother to ask
about her mother. hands
you’re my emissary
when a notch in spy park
trips me—hands
better you greet the ground
than my teeth, chin,
or nose—skin on my thumb’s
hillock left flapping.
hands better you
than the dildo
my lover keeps asking for—no lineage
or history or story
to surgical silicone—i prefer you
my wrist-jointed janus
opening the passageway
of pleasure or birth. when it feels good
my beloved reaches down, traces
the skin on my unnamed
knuckle side, & i think
of my grandmother
marked there
with an om tattoo
before she was loaded
onto the back of the truck
crossing the cracked
border of partition. she was four.
she would have six kids
who would have fourteen more
& i try to imagine the hands
before her, the hands
before that. i only see
her hands. adorned
silver cuff & red thread wet
washing my brother
under the tap. it’s always
his hands. bent
at the wrist like birds
singing his last summer
on earth. his fist then
the size of the garden’s first
tomato. at the grocer on mass ave
i pick up a tomato
so ridged, rippled
& massive it nearly
beats in my hands.

after, friends brought

potted coral peonies
& purple rhododendrons
to my stoop & drove away

blooms cluttered the front sill
in the dark room
i occupied for days

my loss was barely sorry

to each flower wrested
at its prime in my name
my loss shrugged

when i gave up & gifted

the inside to the outside
delivered my bed to the sidewalk
my dresser to the park’s gazebo

the lake lost its job

to my mirror, which shivered
on its shores like an upright veil
to the other side

birds vacated the shoulders

of branches to nest
in discarded drawers

what about the living?
and the dead?

will they be
reversed too?

model of a mirror

we don’t discuss
how our dead suffered. we observe
roadside vultures scraping
bones on the hit badger. we don’t discuss
luck. green parrot acquired by the dead
with three months left
of living. survived by bird seeking
absence’s meaning
over crests of living
room carpet. we won’t say
how our dead died. anniversaries
we huddle, shivering
in waterfall mist. herons in pairs
punctuate quieting rapids—our dead
returned to living? we won’t suffer
superstition. hit on the wrist
with pigeon shit. white smear. god’s
ceiling. dead laughing. we peel
feeling from skin like a wet one-piece.
spandex noisy. doves keening. grey puffs
who mourn no one. we laugh
when noon shadows father darkness
on the sidewalk below
the sugarberry. we won’t call darkness
that strikes during daylight
grief. in lamp light we flap wings
on the ceiling. in our sleep. scenes
of our dead swapped
with our living. we won’t admit qualities
drool from them into us. their faith
in supplements. night errands
to the red pharmacy. when living,
digging their heels in about
healing. about treatment. they ride
beside me. grief is a bird,
steering.