This poem was written for the latest mini-challenge from Read Write Poem — write seven poems about the body in the context of October. I chose “hands” for the theme of my first poem. Enjoy.

P.S. If you want to read everything else I wrote for the mini-challenge, click here.

———————————————

Maybe if I look a little closer at my hands, I will see
the pens and pencils marching
underneath my fingertips. I can faintly hear their stylus feet
if I study the callous resting on the left side
of my right middle finger. It began enveloping itself in skin
when I was seven, folding itself over in whorl and toughness – and it was birthed
by jumbo-sized pencils and third-grade cursive. It began
to rise up to mock me when I was twelve and discovered
that I speak better with pen and paper. Now, I am thirty three,
and I burst forth stars onto digital paper
with digital ink. But I have not abandoned pen and paper:
if you lean in closer
and put your ear to my callous, it will whisper to you my secret –
pictures bled into composition books. If they were all
stacked up on top of each other, then the topmost regent of my heart
would touch the ceiling with
its black-and-white marbled face.

Right now, I don’t know if I should bare my hands to the cold
or search for mittens to mask them, dry and wrinkled
in their aging, tan canyon glory. October
is tricky like that. To defy
the grayness overhead, I might decorate them
with topaz, garnet, and pretend gold
to make the fallen leaves jealous. But right now, my fingers
are itching to paint those scattered, warm colors
of death and harvest
with some semantic dancing across a keyboard.

Written 10/7/09
© 2009 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.

Stumble It!