Rishma Dunlop

Somewhere, a woman is writing a poem

Somewhere, a woman is writing a poem
in the twilight hours of history, lavender turning to ash,
as time spills over and the moon unfurls her white-pitched fever in
the songs of jasmine winds. The young woman I was climbs the
stairs, the moon's pale alphabet filling her. She tucks her child into
bed, bends over her desk in the yellow lamplight, frees her hand
to write, breaking through the page like that Dorothea Tanning
painting where the artist's hand gashes through the canvas, fingers and
wrist plunged to the bone. She writes a dark, erotic psalm, an elegy,
a poem to grow old in, a poem to die in.


Somewhere, a woman is writing a poem,
as she gives away the clothes of her dead loved ones,
stretching crumpled wings, her words rise liquid in the air,
rosaries of prayer for the dying children, for the ones who
have disappeared, the desaparecido, and for the ones who
have been murdered. She writes through the taste of fear and
rage and fury. She writes in milk and blood, her ink fierce and
iridescent, rooted in love. Somewhere, a woman who thought
she could say nothing is writing a poem and she will sing forever,
blooming in the dark madness of the world.

Memento Mori

Estelle unbuttons her blouse, lays my
hand on the jagged scar where her breast
used to be. She wants me to tell her she is
still beautiful.

I feel her heart beneath the ribbed wall
milk-veined softness knifed into a cavern.
She tells me her husband has not been able
to look at it yet, this place on a woman's body,
nuzzled and suckled and cupped by infants
and lovers.

Her gesture recalls my
first lover, his teenage body, long six foot
stretch, lean limbs, every rib visible, the
surgical scar after the mending of a collapsed
lung. I used to breathe into that curved mark
above his heart, lay my head against its pulse.

Three decades later, I realize my lover
has that same six foot stretch of bones, that
tender ribcage.

How we return, full cycle, to first love.
While ashes that rise meet ashes that fall
we become the world for a while, the rose
of each lung blooming inside.


All this contained in the memory of my hand
on Estelle's heart, her absent breast, sweet flesh
excised into terrible beauty. I tell her she is beautiful,
despite her husband's averted gaze, that she will continue
to be loved.


It can not be otherwise.
For her mother has named her with human faith.
Estelle, her name a star.




Poems from Reading Like a Girl, Windsor: Black Moss Press, 2004. Copyright ©
Rishma Dunlop 2004

Eva Tihanyi

HANDS


1.

It: the universal pronoun of everything

She’s not sure how it happens
but it does

She gives birth, becomes new,
a fresh version of herself
moving in a world more dangerous
yet more beautiful
than what it was

She balances lightly
along the invisible seam
between thought and word,
becomes once again
conscious of amazement

Is amazed by what
she still feels for him,
how in the beginning
she wore his dark love on her throat
like a cameo, like a hand

Now loves him more deeply
though depth is not always passion

Recognizes
that if this is a sadness,
so too is love



2.

Wonder: August,
lush and muscular,
clouds moving
against a plum and sinew night,
air heavy on skin,
palpable

She rolls it silently on her tongue:
plum and sine, palpable
her mind pliant, plying through words,
hand through fur, feet
through long, soft grass

He stands by the window,
arms crossed, hands hidden

Dark sky, he says

Rain



3.

She waits in the cooling dark, watches
the clouds give way to stars, envies
the cat curled against his heart,
its trust instinctive as purring

It takes the warm rhythms of his hand,
gives back its pleasure

She, too, used to be able to do this
freely

In his hands she was a homecoming,
soul and body one

Now there’s a faltering wedged between them,
a sudden virgule she can’t turn
into a hyphen’s small wisdom

Attempt at understanding:
futile as grabbing dust motes
in the curtain-filtered moonlight

All she knows: how much
she wants to write herself home
into his hands


HANDWRITING


Hand, writing
Writing hand
Writing: hand

Right-handed
Left-handed
Backhanded
Underhanded
Have a hand in it
Hands up
Hands down
Hand in hand
Hands of time

Handout
Handmade
Hand-me-down
Hands on
Hands off
Play the hand
Handle

Handcuff
Hand job
Hand gun
Handshake
Shaking hands
Hands tied

Give me a hand
Hand it over
Hand me your hands
Unhand me

Susan McMaster

Water Paper Stone
(a word-litho birthday card for Penn Kemp)


Could I lean into, press my hands onto this stone
with such energy of friendship that all bumps and runnels flatten,
could I roll it so hard that colour transfers
direct from my hands
to yours
the paper
between us carrying
a re-prise of the richest hues of our hollers while yet
marking each edge sharp
sharp
press here
and here
on op
this double-lobed o
loop, this o-
penned
to
nal,
could I swoop greased whorls, raze acid, cut space,
wash water, stream, flush this bland polished flat with all the soaring years hanging transparent on layers of a-lines,
Ah, lady, here's a birthday card cut to absorptions beyond first seeing, a hand-on-hand print, digging through stone to shape water mould paper –
mark our re/verse in/verse ob/verse re/fold of the loop- a-laughing word.

(unpublished, (c) Susan McMaster, Ottawa, 2004)


Lately, she remembers (March)

Her palms are hungry.
Oh, other parts too,
but in the night, now he’s gone,
and even the cat finds
elsewhere to sleep,
it is her palms that ache
for the feel of his shoulder,
right there, in the centre
of her hand, where the bones
come together, where the flesh
sparks at a touch.

The heart, she calls it
to herself, much more real
than the erratic muscle
that lodges over her stomach,
stutters when she climbs
the stairs too fast,
burns and knocks,
a complaining roomer
always ready to whine.

In the rain-pattered night
she rubs palms against the sheet –
his hip – his shoulder –
how they fit as she rolls
onto her side, as she smooths
her hand down a muscled arm,
slips it over his chest,
circles, presses
till the nipple hardens,
tucks knees against thighs,
soft fur rubbing
as she strokes further down,
strokes the curl of hair
under the slow ribs,
down the feathered belly,
cups a soft rise.

In the flat, empty bed,
to the beat of rain,
she covers her mouth,
brings a tongue into that crease.

Cups her heart.
Licks it dry.

from Until the Light Bends (Black Moss, 2004), (c) Susan McMaster

Mary's Desecration

Looking for something beautiful
in the woods
behind an old Kentucky monastery,
I find a grey, stone statue
of Mary,

tall,
smooth,
in modern design,
long lines,
full robes
that drape over her shoulders,
over her breasts
then fan out
as if opening to the wind.
Her long neck
holds
her head up;
her eyes behold yours.

My eyes are drawn to
her chest
where crude, rough-hewn,
misshapen hands
B small, disproportionate hands
pasted together in prayer B
protrude from her breastbone,
phallic-like,
squashing her torso,
B not hands
sculpted by the artist
but someone=s sacrilege,
a strident appendage,
an afterthought to hide something,
or to draw the observer’s eye
away from some offending line
to these supplicant fingers.

For added measure,
beside her has been placed
a hand-painted sign:
PRAY PRAY PRAY.

On the ground in front of her
a glass jar holds a one-dollar rosary;

I wonder
what monk passed her
in the woods one day,
thought to himself, I can fix this,
and hurrying back to the grounds,
painted this sign,
spoke to a sculptor friend who crafted these hands,
and days later on collecting them, ran back up the hill
with his box of props and adhesive,
stuck these praying hands to the statue himself,
arranged the sign and the glass jar
containing the rosary,

then satisfied,
stood back
to behold his creation

Carlinda D'Alimonte

Different Worlds

Watching the news with my daughter
we lean against each other,
her young body folding into mine,
her slender hand in mine.

The Northern Alliance has just taken Kabul.
The camera exposes shrouded women
in a sunny market.
One
tosses back
her burka,
exposing squinting eyes,
a radiant smile,
hands that come to life
as they fondle produce,
fingers for a moment free to touch.

An Afghan vendor rages:
Disgusting. Cover your face.
The woman swiftly complies.

Beside me my daughter stares,
questions:
“Why is she is disgusting?
“Why should she cover her face?”
With faith concludes,
“That’s mean! We’re lucky. Our leaders
wouldn’t let that happen to us.”

She needs to believe this,
turns to me,
in the silence, sees my downcast eyes, feels a trace
of the shudder I cannot suppress

as I consider
what made the Afghan woman cower,
what made her swiftly bow her head,
transform her face to a stony mask,
roll the daylight out of her life
with her own
deft hands.

Carlinda D'Alimonte

Fouled Bride

Early in the morning
on her wedding day
she traipsed off to the
aesthetician,
had two broken nails,
replaced on the index and middle fingers
on her left hand
B false nails glued over her own B
painted in bright red polish.

Late afternoon
at the church,
as she stood before the alter
in her silk dress
beside her groom,
the organ playing,
the soprano lifting everyone
into the heavens,
she saw it first:
two quarter moons of red nail polish
and white crusty glue
where the false nails had fallen off.

By the end of the day,
after the vows were made,
photos taken,
six-course dinner served,
speeches delivered,
dancing stilled,

after all those eyes
looking her way,
she had become adept at
curling those two fingers
under her thumb,
into her fist,
below the table,
under his collar,
between the folds of her white dress.

Carlinda D'Alimonte

Success for Every Student

Success for Every Student
48" h x 84" w
1990
CLICK FOR LARGER PICTURE


Embroidered and quilted textile

Success for Every Student was the motto of the London Board of
Education when "Whole Language" was de rigueur. I asked the students from Junior
Kindergarten to Grade 8 at one public school to write the motto without
any assistance. One of the the youngest students traced around her hand.
The work was bought by several corporations and presented to the retiring
Director.

Kirtley Jarvis

Adapted from Changing Place

You watch everything
invisibly
preparing
(chopping carrots for couscous over the
open brazier,
haggling in the market
dandling a child
separate
& certain
to serve is to control.

I stoop at the lintel
to enter the world of women
out of solid sunlight
into the malleable dark.

Eyes enlarge.
Shapes emerge.
Welcoming the wave
of brown hand, how tenderly


how tentatively to reach
to point of crossing
a span of white room.

Henna intricate
on your hand, each finger its own design
the palm crossed
on your feet & ankles.

You paint me as if I knew the flame
the stir of red mud in the pot
drawing me in even
when I lose the thread to difference.


The yearning as we meet
you to know, I to be.


We are each other’s fantasy.






Penn Kemp, Changing Place (Fiddlehead, 1978), with author's permission

Gary the Gardener

I hear the scraping
in the garden.

Rocks are moved
and worms that were dead
come to life.

We didn’t know
that eternity was in a sod,
literally,

and that the universe was unrolling,
as it should,
before our eyes
and beneath our feet.

You took my hand
and poked my fingers into God.

I blinked at immortality
before it disappeared.


John J. Guiney Yallop

"The Visitor"

Excerpts from a short story entitled "The Visitor". Today the twenty minutes of penmanship practice was half over when Mark eased himself into his desk seat. He began, by himself, the conscious examination of posture that is always the first step towards good penmanship, according to Sr. Eustace. His legs were straight forward, his feet planted squarely beneath the desk top. His back was tilted only slightly forward, but without arching his spine. The full length of his forearm from the elbow to the wrist was resting very lightly on the desk and the edge of the paper. Mark was left-handed but Sr. Eustace had never tried to change that. She did tell him once that in the old days teachers would wrap pupils on the knuckles with a bamboo cane if they were caught using their left hands ever. Tony had listened in and grinned as he made a jerking motion with his left hand that the nun alone was not able to see.
Perfecting the vertical loops of the small "l's" and the graceful double curves of the capital "F's" and "T's" had been difficult for Mark. Always with a fountain pen and wet ink he had to be careful not to smudge his work. Being left-handed and writing from left to right meant the palm of his hand automatically followed over the writing smearing it if he was too fast or not careful. Mark was being especially careful paying particular attention, almost sounding his big elliptical "O's" as he was writing them when. "Oh!" Something small and sharp stung him in the back. The dart consisted of a straight pin rammed through a spit ball of wadded paper. (it). dropped to the hard linoleum tile floor with a click. Tony let out an unconvincing cough to cover his grin and Sr. Eustace found him out, and Deirdre was now laughing. She turned her head sideways to share her delight with Mark, but he was remorsefully somber, not wanting to further offend Tony. Mark could not face Deirdre, so he forced his gaze out the window to the school yard and the bushes beyond. He only listened to the cracking of the strap.

Frank Beltrano

Building a Log Cabin

Scott Manning

At the Dentist

Richard Gilmore

Father and Son

Kara, Dave, and Harrison Meulensteen

The Big Day

'A future brother-in-law helps his best friend put the finishing touches on his wedding day attire.'

Heather Lynch

Benedictions in Paris

Back from Paris. Went to a funeral of a bishop in Notre Dame. He was confessor to the Latin Quarter in the '20s, a parish priest in the occupation and finally a kind of priest trainer. The choir were student priests robed in exquisite turquoise. The hand movements to direct the singers and the congregation were perfectly co-ordinated among several boy conductors. The hands looked like spiralling birds.

It was a plain used coffin. But he must have lived like a king. Nice residence, the seine, artists, song. And other rites.

Then up to Sacre Coeur for the choir of nuns. I was startled by the same hand movements as they sang among candles the soloists sounding like they knew the most frightful secrets.

I went to Montmartre graveyard to get more shots of Nijinsky's tomb for my next book's cover. My hands for the first time don't appear in the shots. But a black graveyard cat does, ruffled by a wind, tail swaying. Then a blue tin sepulchre and next a row of peaked tombs including that of an exiled Romanov teenage princess. There is another tomb with an inner light. The row of tombs resemble exactly the roofs of Paris I had taken earlier from the steps of Sacre Coeur on Montmartre. Snow over blue and green. Perhaps this is a design of some transcendental tourist board.

I also saw an exhibit of Coptic funery items at the Louvre. Pictures of Annubis and Osiris helping a Christian into the grave. Lots of sculpture of sacred hands. There is a whole cult of these. Especially of John the Baptist of course. There are significant things about those number of fingers extended, where are the ones not shown. There are municipal contests about where the 'missing ones' are (as three or two are extended for certain blessings). One finger is supposed to be in St. Jean De Marianne in the Alps where the Savoys come from. I saw the church there last year. John's finger is there. I saw a skull of his at the Sultan's place in Istanbul.

Post-mortuary dismembership must be so disconcerting.


Richard Rathwell

Laundry

A woman in Cameroon uses her hands to wash clothing on the laundry rock behind her living quarters.

Carissa MacLennan

Making Music

Local men and women in Cameroon create music with their hand-made instruments.

Carissa MacLennan

Braiding

Local girls in Cameroon spend hours braiding a woman's hair.


Carissa MacLennan

Tattoos

Local artists use the traditional technique of bamboo tattooing in Thailand.

Hand Maid

She claimed to be a reader of palms
who could foretell my romantic fate.

"Your future is in the palm of your hand," she concluded.
"Redundant from a palm-reader," I thought.

I dismissed her $10 prognosis
and left clutching my tired heart.


Sonia Halpern

ELEGY FOR A CARPENTER

I first felt when I was five or six
Where shrapnel had scarred my father’s scalp
And startled, his hands never did again
Tousle my hair. A uniform vanished from the attic.

And his hands grew thick with flesh from labour.
They built homes as easy as some spun talk
And my hand was tiny in his when we walked
Through the mud about spangling houses.

Sundays saw him out with farmers, his friends.
Their hands would ruck in the firm good earth
About green shoots. Or we would enter dim forests
Spotting the white puffs of mushrooms

After shuddering storms. The winters brought a whiteness
To his hair and took him to the basement and the building
Of bee boxes. How I cursed then his thin white hair
And wished out balding under the sun’s intense witness.

There comes an awful droning from his last box
And though my words are gibberish to them
As this bee’s business is to me,
I have read the texts on how two queen bees battle

And now issues the flight from their threshold.
I keep a good bystander’s distance
From the busy swarming, the thrumming
Through narrow passage. My words prove poor tools

Now that his poor head lies underfoot where white is black.


Joe Paczuski

Artemisia Gentileschi

Praise be your vantage point (1593 - 1653)

I. Artemisia,

before the maid with her babe
poses as your Virgin and Child,
she betrays you, lets in Agostino
Tassi, the friend your father hired
to teach you perspective.

And he does –
plugs your screams
deflects your dagger
A virtuous woman keeps a dagger by her bedside?

And again –
shoos his wife away
says he'll marry you
promises your father
a nozze di riparazione
instead steals his painting
that not your rape enrages your father

Afterimage (post-trial) –
you're called Puttana! Whore!
& married off, out of sight

your life and landscape displaced –
still, your hands paint you into
a new perspective:

Risorgimento, Rebirth –
1st woman in the Accademia and the Uffizi Gallery
Galileo and Cosimo Medici, your allies



Katerina Fretwell
Parry Sound, Ontario, 2003
Note: nozze di riparazione = marriage of reparation


First Woman in Accademia dell' Arte, Florence

II. Artemisia Gentileschi


Creatrix,

on the chaste white canvas
you whip force into form

your colourful embrace
is the stay of time

against the odds, this body of work
a gendered triumph

and the slow stroking:
seeing becomes being

Each lash of the sable brush
imprints a critical mass:

the birth or death of
Incandescence

No random fling this votive act

Nor do you diminish your rape by recanting it
At his trial your father's friend, your teacher
the prosecutor had your fingers racked to extract a denial?

Yet "Judith and Holophernes"
your masterpiece:
slays all savage force they sanctioned




Katerina Fretwell
Parry Sound, Ontario, 2003


Trial of Agostino Tassi, May 14, 1612

III. Artemisia,

The Sibile, Instrument of Torture, is used on you:

palm to palm like Duhrer's
Praying Hands, but bound,
& squeezed of supple strength
with each turn of the screw,

your hands are on trial –
bloodied from denying Tassi's lies:
you spread your legs
for him, his patrons, commissions.
You, greater artist, but lesser gender.

His hands, his strength, his privilege
preying on you
while he paints Muses with your father
for Cardinal Borghese.

The cord's bite, your father's nod,
rings of fire, this Inquisition;
your white sleeves reddened.
If a woman is raped, she invites it.
A virtuous woman keeps a dagger by her bedside?

O Artemisia, your courage
is on record – between the lines.
Your hands a prayer
stained by the centuries,
a palm crossed.





Katerina Fretwell
Parry Sound, Ontario, 2003


"Judith and Holophernes" in Uffizi Gallery, Florence

IV. Artemisia,

it's your piece hanging on the wall:

Hands aching from Sibile's vice, you stroke
muscle & sinew into Judith's arm
sawing through the tyrant's neck, and into
the maid, Abra's. They wrestle him down,
their fury and disgust in stark relief –
his head, his blade in shadow,
his knees bent, head down
pushed into the soiled sheets,
background black as intent.

Not passive like Caravaggio's Judith,
yours, true to deed,
is filled with riparazione
for half of humanity oppressed.
The act of painting
Judith and Abra's triumph
anoints your crushed
fingers, you, chosen Creator.





Katerina Fretwell
Parry Sound, Ontario, 2003


Basement playroom, 1955

V. Artemisia,

it's often those close to us:

lone male in a 50s household;
two widowed sisters, boy, girl.

his male privilege handed him
the run of the house, of me.

Too old to play Doctor, we were 11, still
he cupped my swells and curves

and clutched his budding
phallic universe –

my teacher of perspective.
His Intro to Anatomy

was underhanded – other specimens
later came up short.




Katerina Fretwell
Parry Sound, Ontario, 2003
2003


Rape Trial, Halifax, November 11, 1972

VI. Artemisia,

she too is under twenty
and she too, twice violated:

A girl hitches a ride
with 7 bikers, shares a bottle,
tours their clubhouse.

Threatened with a spiked ball
on a chain and growling Doberman,
she succumbs, passes out

before the 7th biker plus dog
get their licks. Sentenced
to seven years in the pen,

the seventh gets off with less
since the girl fortuitously
faints dead away –
the bikers swagger en camera.

Called Whore! the victim, her family
flee, their sentence, yours, Artemisia –
life and landscape displaced.


Katerina Fretwell
Parry Sound, Ontario, 2003


Cornell University, Spring 1963

VII. Artemisia,

it still happens:

Spring Fling at Cornell's jock frat –
petting to penetration in 5 dates flat.

My beau's surprise, instead of the women's dorm,
I'll share his bed. (No money for a taxi getaway!)

Cornell boys marry co-eds, practice on Wells girls,
but I'm saved by frozen muscles, no way in.

Instead we lie like curved spoons, forced
to swallow the medicine, I shower off at 4 am.

That Sunday I seethe while the band plays
The Big Bamboo, count the hours till the end.

My psychiatrist hands me a line, You wanted
to satisfy your curiosity.

Anger penetrates my paralysis
over mom's death orphaning me,

I escape this whoredom, transfer
to a Canadian University, hands off.


Katerina Fretwell
Parry Sound, Ontario, 2003

Hands Always Remember

A mind may forget things,
they slip away into the night or
fade back into death in a moment of idleness
a mind is a leaky amphora for the sweet wine or bitter potions of memory,
and is rather indiscriminate of what goes, and what stays.
But hands remember well.
A pianist's hands remember a tune and how to play it
even after he is long deaf and can't remember his grandchildren's names.
A gambler's shaky hands remember the feel of the cards or the die,
even after he is broke or reformed or both.
An artist's hands remember the patterns and subtleties of the brush.
even after they swear they will never paint again.
A violinist's hands remember every sweep and vibe of the bow,
long after they have failed to be moved by the music.
An author's hands remember the desperate flow of writing before the inspiration disappears
even after the manuscripts lie long forgotten in a binder in an attic.

Hands don't forget because we would lose so much if they did
Hands will always take care of their owners.
Hands will remember, Just in case your past rises up to face you, one last time.
Hands always remember.

Trevor Plint

The Poet’s Hands

The poet’s hands are the only things catching the light suspended from the garage as we lounge, in wait for the coming storm. It dangles from an orange extension cord, in the mild wind it turns, brightening and then darkening the yard, dangling, dancing the light. For a moment the world is bathed in darkness and then, there and for just a moment again, the light hanging there makes clear those instruments, lovely and deadly, capable of such beauty, such destruction. Death and life and love and the storm, all together wrapped up in those ten fingers. The sky above is alluring, the same colour as the ink staining his fingertips; the telltale blue and black, which spills, like blood, and which won’t wash off because he is the one who is guilty, his hands are the parchment, his body is. The poet’s hands are full, they hold a half empty glass bottle of strong amber liquid and a half full chipped mug of the same. The poet’s stomach and my own hold the other half. He smiles and his hand reaches the bottle across his long lap to me, he says he’s been sending me telepathic messages, for hours now, for years, and to be fair, I’ve felt them the same way I feel it when the storm moves faster and faster still across the world to where we are, with the same apprehensions, the same anticipation, the same earthy need. I’ve been smelling it in the air. I take the bottle from these poet’s hands and move it to my mouth. The light has turn itself around and rested, leaving us happily in quiet darkness, but there is lightning in the sky far away and I see his face for just a second, and his mouth is open and his eyes are open and I smile “You want to set my insides to fire?” I am bold now, like crass sudden claps of thunder, and he follows me, like lightening, laughing, because his message came to me in a bottle. I take a long drink from it, and as the amber liquid washes about, like liquid gold in my stomach, I shake my head and my body shivers.
“Actually, yes”. He laughs again and it’s the three beat rhythmic laugh he makes when he knows he’ll soon be flopping about in the rain and using a clean half bottle of Gibson’s Finest as protection against the cold hardness of the ground, as lubrication for love that gets made and unmade,
The poet has moved stereo speakers, some high tech cordless magic outside to beside the house, not far from where we sit. Miles Davis trumpets from the Fillmore, slightly closer than the rumble of summer thunder whose impending vibration rumbles right now farther than that distant liquid energy, but moving fast. He not like Davis especially, but this occasion calls for magic jazz, hot and cool rhythms and the intensity of genius found only in the pulsing fingers of those most like gods: the obsessed, the driven, almost not real, almost not now. An hour earlier, the poet took me by the hand, and lured me with promises of movable jazz, jazz that can be taken with us, appealing to my need for constant artfulness, combining my needs.
Fat raindrops begin to hurl themselves from the pregnant sky, and neither of us flinches from the wet. We aren’t the flinching type, the poet and I.
He navigates us in the dark past domestic child sized trees and swings and a tame gazebo. We aren’t looking for a shelter. We find ourselves suddenly naked, somewhere between the time it takes to improve on human nature and the time it takes to debase it. The thunder shakes the whole world and we are off our feet. Lightning hits the sky, catching on the shiny side of the rain and we are on our backs, The thunder is repetitive, the thunder rolls and rolls and the poet says from on top of me “Maybe we brought it with us again” and I laugh. The inside of me is turned amber with the influence of whiskey and lust and June rain and those hands around me, my back to the ground, a slight impression of the curves of my young body, his hands in the soft brown dirt, summer angels of grass and mud.
His hands, those poet’s hands are on me, and my body is slipping wet and the ground is wet, Miles Davis is soaking, somewhere farther now, than the thunder, and still we are not flinching from the rain. The poet’s hands are on my body, the poet’s hands are on me, and the ink doesn’t drain onto my skin and I kiss the poet’s hands and they are on my mouth. There aren’t enough places for those hands, there aren’t enough places in the world for those hands, and nothing touches like the cool rain, a sort of freshness, quelling fire.
When the storm begins to slow, the poet’s hands brush stray leaves from my knotted hair. He tells me all about the meaning of everything, and he is imperfect, the highest order of deceit, but those hands don’t lie. We laugh, standing straight up in the dark night. We take longer than is necessary to collect our clothing, standing naked with our backs to that sky. We can see in windows. Normal people are watching prime time TV. We hope, the both of us, that we are never normal.
The poet and I are allies. We walk together, not touching, complicit in our wet desires, in our sated need, in what we take life to be, what we take out of it, these sounds, this place, those hands. Once we are back inside, my body is forgotten as he strums a battered guitar, sounds of love and loss ring in the air, the work of his hands, and I am made, unmade. Exhausted. I call a cab, and when it arrives I don’t need to look back. These are all repeatable patterns. I leave the hands, those chords strumming softly, but take the jazz along.

Michelle Miller

my universe

green and white
velvet sculptures
fade discretely
in the morning sun

silver dust
sprinkles soft
on mahogany
while swollen fingers
embrace the slender needle
and play a silent song of silk

the embroidery sings
in tranquil tones
of earth and sky

I sit barefoot
in the picture
dig my splendid hands
in the gentle browns
like a gardener
in a tropical oasis

I patiently create
my universe
the eternal stitches
a small immortal gesture
not to be forgotten
like a tender lullaby
and a kiss

I.B. Iskov

Depths

In this house words and tears
have a place
My father is a man
who puts shovel to soil
whose sweat bleeds into clay and rock
He knows the depths of grief
feels it in his hands
climbing up from graves

Mary Ann Mulhern

When Hands Sleep, What Do They Dream?

His hands dream the sudden strike of fish,
while hers dream textures and stitches;

his hands dream missing letters, a jumbled keyboard,
while her hands dream bond paper with keen edges;

his hands dream a wooden spoon, how it slowly
stirs his favorite sauce to its moment of perfection;

while hers dream the familiar marriage of fork
and knife as she moves the morsel to her mouth;

his hands dream how the fingers cup the softness
of her breast, her nipple a tiny caged bird;

her hands dream the movement of his buttocks
as he moves, her fingers sliding on his hips.

Sometimes his hands and her hands do not dream,
but lie restless and tense as battle-worn soldiers

lost in wrenching memories of hand thwarting hand.
At other times hands sleep in a fingerless void.


Glen Sorestad
from Blood & Bone, Ice & Stone(Thistledown Press, 2005)

The Gardener

They nimbly sweep down, with a dancer's grace,
Judgementally caressing, that foliage placed,
Discerning, those worthy, and which don't belong,
From the feel of the stem, or the leaf, or a thorn.

Hunched over, kneeling, in the cool of the night,
Of no use to his labours, was the 9-5 light,
Dew moistened hands, work methodically, impassioned,
Lips drag slowly, on the smoke, dirty fingers had fashioned.

Digits press into soil, forming mounds, cradling roots,
Water, poured from a can, nurtures each fragile shoot,
Gently, he reviews all, between thumb and four fingers,
Backward, sweep of his hand, gauging growth, still lingers.


Sentinels of his labours, stood by, closely, on guard,
Their yellow rimmed faces, turned south of the yard,
His head, upward angled, catches the first call, of a lark,
Water prisms, refracting moonlight, sparkle unseen in the dark.

Straightening slowly, groaning softly, a push
on his cane,
Breathing deeply, through nostrils, he smells coming rain,
That call, his work whistle, first hint of the dawn,
He sighs deeply, shuffles slowly, to the porch, cross the lawn.


Todd Henry

My Mother's Hands

my mother’s hands

appear one afternoon as i peel potatoes for supper
the twist of wrist, a cupping of the palm
veins of garden soil in her thumb cracks
traces along the cuticle

sometimes they wear the stain of fall beets
peeled after boiling on the wood stove
the blunt fingernails, the memory of chalk dust
the strength of holding, of letting go

one saturday, her hands deep in wash water
the tongue of sheets passed through the wringer
with a gasp of air I looked up to see
her fingers hand arm

following the cloth into the rollers
until she sprung their grip and cried
get your father and with a hollow dark
in my chest i ran to the barn calling

now as her hands emerge from mine
i remember the day when i first knew
that she too was a passing force
a warm wind blowing outside my window


Rebecca Luce-Kapler

LETTING GO

My fists pound the old black door
As it slowly closes, sealing away
The love and laugher of an old friend.

My hands helplessly slide over
The rough, splintered wood, unable to stop
Time.

The sound of the door clicking shut
Ends all that was.
My hands, now open, surrender the fight
Now free to softly wipe away
The tears streaming down my face.

Kathleen Morrison

Musings

In search of pain
he cuts off her hands,
places them atop each other on the mantle,
a gesture of patience
yet, she notices an occasional twitch,
fingertips itching to get down,
thumb through subversive literature.

“How small,” he muses,
“like the hands in cumming’s poem.”
“Yes, I love that poem too,” she gushes,
wipes away his tears,
grateful he can feel her pain –
the sting of an open wound.
In return, she leaves his face
stained with the fruits of his labour.

She senses her Muse approaching,
searches for a pen,
her toes do not reach the table,
her own tears cannot peel back the tape
now fastened over her mouth.
The Muse is amused.
“Always giving up something for nothing.
Not one to think ahead, are you?”

Now thought is all she has left,
snarling thick with teeth and spittle,
ideas circle, wolves
attracted to the scent of pain,
with names as familiar
as her own family's,
and just as unreachable,
the only thought she is now able to grasp.

Lynn Tait

HERITAGE HANDS

A mother's hands lemon
wood, metal, clay, fibre -
abrase, scour, polish,
stitch fallen cuff,
press around pearl buttons,
fasten heart locket clasp,
Vermillion red maples onto canvas,
clip and store family snippets.

A mother's fingers kung fu-train pooch,
Whip cookie batter into shape,
Tie CARE packages in knots,
Snap mats against brick wall.
In rapid-fire succession, rounded fist
scoops up creamy mashed potatoes,
crumbles bacon into bits,
subdues sucking, metal monster
(dragging it from the room),
then, tiring of victory, chops onions.

A mother' hands hoist cast iron
Fry pan onto stovetop,
10-pound carrots into pantry,
20-pound ironing into closet,
30-pound wet laundry into dryer,
40-pound preschooler into carseat,
arm-wrestle teen-age kids and
flip mattresses.

A mother's knobby willow fingers
curve around lunchpail handle,
skim typewriter/computer keyboard,
reach for legato rolling 10ths and
score points on the tennis court.
Useful...all together lovely!
Why, I would venture to say
They're a work of art.
With a sure and steady grip,
Around the world and back again,
They guided me on maiden trip.

A puzzle remains:
When did HER hands on the wheel
Change into MINE along the way?

Dorothy McPherson

Cuban Hands - Lynn Tait

Hands Full - Old Havana, Cuba 2005
Rolling Havanas - Cuba 2005
Hands at Work - Old Havana, Cuba 2005

Starie ruki ne krasivie. Old hands are not beautiful, she said.

But they are.
As they cut up beets,
and sort Scrabble letters
which don't turn easily
into English words.

Hands that tested blood in the lab, hour after hour.
Or brushed dogs' fur until it gleamed.

Hands, braiding the hair of an 18 year-old girl.

Then grasping a pen that wrote of Stalin's evil
and sent her to a prison camp for 25 years,
where frozen roads were built and
letters from home were opened rarely
and with great pain.

Hands that must have clapped when Stalin died
making possible the quiet exit from Lubyanka,
into the Moscow sunshine
and the new
world.

To Rome, Toronto, Edmonton and here.

Where the very same hands turn beets into Borsch
and hold Scrabble tiles that might never have been held at all.

Lovely, loving camera-shy hands that,
despite their refusal to appear below,
are so very thankful to have aged.


Larissa Klein

"Bodhisattva and Hands"

Margaret Rossiter

Hold

Worlds turn

on this: sorrow sees itself
in the mirror, and, behind,
the shadow of joy. Your world lies

on the bed, emaciated
limbs curled into an old sea,
lips so dry you can no longer

moisten them with your own. The nurse says
"it's time to gather
around," and the room

empties of what you knew
all along had no name. You see
them spinning in the light: love,

loss, love, loss, love,
loss. Turn. At the door:
seasons

reach for your hands: hold.



Lorri Neilsen

A Painter's Hand

Kevin Bice

My Imaginative Terrain

My Imaginative Terrain Revisited

From my unconscious to the conscious, through endless memories, emotions, symbols and images, I mold tradition with my own hands.

The first course I took when beginning my Masters degree was entitled Educating through Artistic Themes and Processes. Professor Hoogland encouraged creativity and artistic responses to the weekly assignments. Although my undergrad degree had been in visual arts, I had barely picked up a paintbrush in seventeen years. My artistic drought was about to end.

The articles found in the course section called Mapping your Imaginative Terrain triggered a visual response that woke a dormant need in me to create. One such article was Creativity, the Arts and the Renewal of Culture (1989) by Peter Abbs.

Abbs discusses the vertical axis of creativity as being the movement between the conscious and the unconscious. He states that for creative thinking to happen “one must step sideways out of the track set by logic and downwards into the unconscious” (p.10, 1989). Yet I would not “step” as Abbs suggests with my feet. It was a journey I would take with and through my hands. The painting process, I knew, would allow me to take the trip from conscious to unconscious and from experience to symbol. I would become reacquainted with the knowledge that “the artist knows through sight and through feel” (Eisner, 1998, p. 48).

For these reasons, my hand became the focal point of the painting that I would call, My Imaginative Terrain.

Abbs also speaks of another axis of creativity. This one is horizontal. It considers the relationship between inherited culture, symbols or traditions and innovation. Abbs states that anything we create is in part based on something we have seen or experienced (Abbs, 1989, p. 18).

Many of the experiences that have impacted on me physically, emotionally and spiritually, have come to me through my hands. Music, nature, my heritage and dreams drift between my fingers. Abbs quotes Wagner in his article who stated that “the stream of life was not to flow to me from without, but from within.” (Abbs, 1989, p.14). The water flows from my hand right off the page imitating the way that creative thoughts flow when one is inspired. My hands are the conduits through which my creativity moves. Merleau Ponty suggests that the artist’s hand becomes an instrument that like a conductor brings a sort of electrical current and spark from the outside world to that world of vision within (1994).

I wanted to explore both of Abbs’ axes in my painting and as I looked at my hand, I saw that both were firmly etched in my palm. My heart line and life line became visual representations of the axes Abbs spoke to me of. Both were wrapped around my paintbrush as I began to stroke the paper with colours from within.

The final addition to the painting was to add a narrative section along the border since writing is also a creative outlet that I explore. Around the edge of the painting I printed, “Which direction do I go to find my imaginative terrain?” My answer was one that I continue to explore and contemplate. It is how I began this reminiscence and it is where my journey once again ends. “From my unconscious to the conscious through endless memories, emotions, symbols and images, I mold tradition with my own hands.”

Marlene Lee

My Imaginative Terrain (Watercolour), 2000


Bibliography


Abbs, P. (1989). Creativity, the arts and the renewal of culture. A is for aesthetic: Essays on creative and aesthetic education. New York, NY: The Falmer Press.

Eisner, E. (1998). The kinds of schools we need: Personal essays. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Merleau-Ponty, M. (1994). Eye and mind. In S.D. Ross (Ed.), Art and its significance: An anthology of aesthetic theory. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Susan’s Hands

Susan’s hands are small
But they reach out to those in need
With many kind and thoughtful deeds

Susan’s hands are small
But they can soothe a fevered brow
Or make a hurt seem less somehow

Susan’s hands are small
But they have carried numerous gifts
And worked to stitch up harmful rifts

Susan’s hands are small
But they can grasp life’s weightier loads
And haul them on uneven roads

Susan’s hands are small
But always generously given
Perhaps they are the hands of Heaven

Sheila Martindale

Maiden Mother Crone

Walking to the library
the baby snugly wrapped in the stroller
mid-December wind making my forehead ache
struggling to push through frozen slush

ahead I see an old woman
bent in half like a broken branch
with a spine I can feel
collapsing in on itself
she can only stare at the ground

she is wearing neon and grey high top sneakers
white socks
polyester pants
tattered winter coat unzipped

her hands are shockingly bare
gnarled
waxy white with cold
clutching her wallet
uncertain about crossing the road
to the waiting warmth of the donut shop

my first reaction is irritation
the next moment brings compassion

I bend way over to look up into her face
and offer to help
she is confused and mutters to herself
apologizes for not being able to see me

she takes my gloved offering
we move cautiously across the street
navigating ice and other treacheries
as I push the stroller with one hand
and guide her along with the other

I know with certainty my place on the great wheel
propelling my daughter
fresh in the world ahead of me
myself a new mother in between
bearing the ravaged bird hand of old age

Catherine Heighway

At the Concert

In the school gym
the children’s choir was stacked
five deep on bleachers
black pants, black shirts
white gloves

lights went out on cue
all chatter stopped

the children’s gloves were illuminated
fluorescent green
they began to sing with their hands
a Christmas carol
in complete silence

with a steady, concentrated flow
hands gesturing
arms circling in and around
up and down

the language of their hands
eloquent and clear
the words and phrases familiar
by the second verse

all is calm
all is bright



Catherine Heighway

On Chinese New Year

My daughter tips her small head back
exposing soft throat
so that I may fasten
the frog clasp that decorates the high neck
of her lavender silk dress
from China

my hands feel too large and clumsy,
the narrow loop of ribbon
slips awkwardly through my fingers


I feel the sudden presence
of her birth mother’s hands,
a translucent overlay on my own
smaller, more delicate than mine
rough edged in poverty

longing to reach easily,
lovingly
for this small task

my heart catches


in the next breath,
the thin circle of silk
gently slides into place
over the adjoining taut round ball

held fast for the celebration



Catherine Heighway

Touch and Contrast

The hallway was long, dark and lined with young girls each standing in front of a room with a pink cloth for a door. I cast my eyes downward as the tension of a new situation and the awkwardness of a strange place pressed in on all sides. I glanced to the side and one door was held open by the hands of a young girl as she talked with a gruff voice from inside the room. I caught sight of a hard looking man with no shirt on surrounded by the smoke of his cigarette. His eyes caught mine; embarrassed I turned my head and saw my hostess round another corner.
I was visiting Shenzhen, a new booming city, through the suggestion of my aunt, and though this was not my first time in China, I was equally as resistant about going as the first time. The defecating children on the streets, the non-discriminating phlegm projectiles, the acrid smells of overpopulation, and the deafening sounds of industry were all too much for a teenager happy to hang out at the mall with her friends. Somehow I had been dragged back to my motherland under the vague mandate given by my aunt to connect with my Chinese roots.
The constant twisting and turning came to an end at a pink door just like all the others. My hostess motioned me through the curtains and left as I stepped through; there was a girl just as old as I was, but a lot smaller standing by the bed. Her hair was swept tightly into a bun and held securely by small, sparkling clips. Her face was broad and her cheeks were flushed. I took off my clothes and shoes and quickly slipped under the towel on the bed as she shyly motioned that I turn over onto my stomach. My face was buried in an orange pillow and as I wondered about the cleanliness of the pillow, I heard her shoes shuffle around to my head. All the muscles in my body braced for impact.
It came, softly at first as if she were looking for a place to hold on to; then hard and constant like waves washing over my thin shoulders. I felt her fingertips trace out the muscles of my back plying and kneading. The more her hands worked the more my muscles resisted. I withered and writhed under the marvelous strength that flowed from her small hands and body. It felt as if the tension in my muscles was great enough to shatter my bones.
After what felt like hours I heard a familiar voice speaking to the girl, which brought me some relief. In the desperate struggle between my body and her hands I had not noticed my aunt slip into the room. I could not understand their conversation as I did not speak Mandarin. As the girl moved her hands down my arms I knew the end was near as all the other parts of me had been defeated. She sat down on the bed and took my right hand into her hands and began to massage my palm. Her thumbs slid up towards my fingertips and she slowly repeated this on each finger. She asked my aunt something and my aunt’s response made them both laugh. The girl glanced over at my face and I saw a look of wistfulness; when she caught my eyes she returned her attention to my hands. My aunt then told me the girl had asked if I had ever worked a day in my life. My aunt had told her I was from Canada and didn’t even need to lift a spoon to my mouth.
My face heated up and my ears burned with what began as embarrassment but quickly turned into shame as she continued massaging my hand. As she had read the story of my life from my soft and smooth hands I was now painfully aware that I could also read the story of her life through her hard and rough hands. Our hands worked as mirrors to each other reflecting our stories through touch and contrast; one of labour and disenfranchisement and another of comfort and privilege.

Elsa Poon

Quilting

These three pictures are of a photo collage I created in a quilt design
called the Dresden plate. The woman in the photograph is my
grandmother, Elsie Teel. She taught me how to quilt and she learned from her mother
and aunts. The quilt in front of her, set up to look like it is in quilt
frames, is my great-grandmother's wedding quilt, which is also a variation
of the Dresden Plate pattern.

Angela Found

Making a Log Cabin

This artwork looks at the different tools used by men and women to
build a "home". The quilt pattern is the log cabin, thinking back to the days
of early pioneers creating their homestead with their own hands. The
tools are the hammer and needle, nail and thread and saw and scissors. Red
was added in the center to represent the warmth of the home. It is created
with fabric and photographic emulsion on fabric. Currently untitled.

Angela Found

World of Hands
Melissa White

Grenade Practice

west elgin students experimenting with hand grenade simulation at the
ww1 simulation

Danny Kajan

Ice Fishing

Danny Kajan

Praying Hands

praying hands in biloxi, mississippi. these were the only object left
on jackie's front lawn when hurricane katriina hit in sept. this year.

Danny Kajan

Hands

Here are my hands with my heart in them.
They keep secrets, like how to clap for rain.
They are hills too steep for silence
but, they are well-trained children who long
and are never allowed out to play.

Sometimes my hands are cut off
as I have learned too much about duty.
Or they can be beggars, creeping from under my sleeves
to tug at the hems of the blessed.
I wish they might be thieves instead

to steal for me autonomy.
Oh! They are blindly obedient these
caged birds, forgetting they could be free.
They are cold, my hands, and empty.
Yet, they are temples of the holy and

opposites. Left and right unite in the sign for prayer.
One hand is darkness, the other the light.
They knock at the door of my soul
and engage the divine listening there.
Mostly they are trying to heal.

To live, unadorned, made wiser by their grief.
They want to speak their beautiful secrets
like how they are my heart. And when I open them
how they spill the rain. How they call and answer.
Little mirrors catching, letting go of everything.


- Terilynn Graham Freedman

Hands Bring in the Ocean

Rolland,
one of the core members
at L’Arche
had just returned to Ontario
from his two week holiday
in Nova Scotia.

We were standing beside
the kitchen counter
sharing news about the trip.
“I’ve brought you a present,”
Rolland said.

I closed my eyes,
and stretched out my hand -
two little pebbles,
and a story
came to rest in my palm.

“I was so afraid of the big waves,
but I went in, and got them for you,”
he said, looking at me.

two stones
picked for me,
cradled all those miles,
in pocket, suitcase and hand.

“Thank you!” I said,
my salt-doll self,
dissolved in an ocean
brought in by hand.


Note: L’Arche is a community for persons with special needs founded by Jean Vanier. ‘Core member’ is the term used for persons with disabilities, because it is they who are at the core of the community.

Anne Escrader

Women Wrapping Candy in Saigon, Vietnam

Carissa MacLennan

Traditional Puppets - Xian, China

Carissa MacLennan

Hands of Buddha - Na Trang, Vietnam

Carissa MacLennan

Students in Cameroon Receive Donations

Time Just Passing By

Time Just Passing By


As I watched some flowers in my garden last spring, I noticed two well known shapes, having the rays of the sun retaining the yellow tint of them. The light is still there, suspended, waiting for the next spring. The shapes however, moved on my sketch pad first, to be transferred than in a mirror on the linden surface.

The time is just passing by and I have to cut on the surface, line by line and shadow by shadow, their story. Not to mention then, that the shadow on the linden block is not growing steadily large, as does in the sunlight every ordinary one. Those ones will remain, fixed on the surface by the edges of the piece of wood as in a warm wood cage, with the time just running through my fingers but with me capturing it in a firm cutted shape.

I can barely hear my pair of hands working on the surface. Every movement is part of that big unbelievable silence, and I know that the tactile sense is awake, being ready to fill and count every cloud in case of an unexpected or unpredicted flight through other texture. As sensitive as they are, these pair of hands seems to be mine; two entities trapped in a symmetrical body, dreaming to switch on the other side of the symmetry line, for good. No wonder that such movement cannot be as easy as it may have appeared to be.

Many of my prints depict the garden, the imaginary island, the ark or the solitary hills I was never able to conquer. However, a single one depicts a pair of hands lying between my flower’s green leaves, blossoming each spring together with the meekly light.

Ortansa Moraru

Between the Paws of the Sphinx

I go alone,
after all diurnal diehards linger in last light
to hunker before Thutmos's looming stele,
hand crossed over my heart in greeting.

The guard who meets me— cross-legged
protector to this eternal realm— drops
personal history, leaves language and
family home to settle here every night—
hooded in dun desert garb for the cold—

among these speaking stones that rumble
too low for my reverberating ear to hear.

We have no language but gesture to
hold against interpretation of the other.
We sit in night certainty beyond concept.

Tell the truth, as it is. The guard’s eye
beams a dark intensely light. When I place
a curious incautious finger on his third eye,
I slip through his forehead into universe and
though my hand drops back, I fall into space
and reel.

Penn Kemp

On the Other Hand of Time

On the other hand
of time, eternity
waits, patient
palms down.

Noot as night sky spreads
over the world, fingers stretched
to the horizon, encompassing
the globe.

Does Noot hold the world together? Imagine
toes stretched to horizon, hands flat on the far
disc. Earth reversed black to sky as curved
dome, a desert petal inverted. Splayed hand
to heel, every night her water bursts to
birth the sun of this dry land.

From the cave of Noot's womb
the word appears ready for syntax.
Beneath us the world spins
dizzy from constant returns.
Rivers of words pour from Noot’s breast,
translate into deities. Stars arise,Light
as she
as she wheels necessity round.

Penn Kemp

What Goes Round

The clock has lost
its hands, hands that led
us through the day’s maze
one moment at a time.
The world is so fast losing
track of hands that press the earth.
Hands that card, spin, weave, guide
the potter’s wheel, shape form from
primal matter, wool and mud.
We know in our heads
what once flew through
our hands. And what we make
is words, words flung
to far reaches, words
as simulacra. Automation replaces
aeons of hands working their
craft, knowing their trade in kind.
Now we digitally
jerk to each next crisis,
alarmed every morning
into action. Not the way
I learned to tell
time, watching the smoothhands
move round the comfort of circle.

Penn Kemp

Mothering

Judith Martin

Flesh and Blood

This is a traditional quilt made in the Ocean Waves Pattern. I am concerned for my family as we enter the 21st century, and used the colours of flesh and blood to create this.

Judith Martin

Ah, Make the Most

Watercolour and stitched bind weed.

Judith Martin

In the Center of the Body is the Soul

Judith Martin

Take my Heart like a Hand and Its fingers

Mixed media, photo of my own hands, watercolour and stitched fabric

Judith Martin

THEIR VOICES FLOWN THROUGH EMERALD TREES (RWANDA)

Who are
these dark ants of death?
these tight
fists,
intent heads?

The women fell,
they stood;
staggered,
fell; they begged
for 20 minutes long O
long O let us live! the men

clubbed them, clubbed
them (will they never
die?), clubbed

until the faces
of the women stopped:

did it –
the women's slender necks and legs
and graceful arms like dolls', strewn
on the road, on
the lovely summer grass.


Susan Downe

PINK

Dr. Thorne won't get here on time. George ran all the way to Merners' to use their phone, but Mrs. Thorne said he was out in the buggy and she didn't know where; she'd give him the news the minute she could, "... and a good thing your Mama is a midwife!"

Mama spreads clean cloths on her and Papa's bed. Between fast puffings and holding onto the doorframe tight with both hands, she tells Papa what to do. M Christine and George and I are sent outside with the mallet and to crack black walnuts and stay there, no nonsense, until Papa says Come in.

We stand in the doorway anyway.

Papa hasn't done this before, but Mama has. She climbs heavy up into the middle of the bed and props on her elbows. Mama is never noisy, but she is now; groans. She blows like the big cheeks of the North Wind pushes so big that our house feels away too small. Mama never sweats either, but she sweats now, and her face red to bursting and ...NOW! she shouts at Papa, and Papa is bent down catching, and here is a baby.

And again - blowing and groaning and Mama holler another huge time, and here is another one.

... and is there another one? (we are right in room now). Mama is maybe-laughing, maybe-crying, and Papa's hair is flopped down on his forehead and nose his shirtsleeves shoved up to the tops of his arms, he's still crouched down, looking close and amazed. pushes again; there is another one! But this one is a baby, it's a big blob of blood.

Mama sits up and shows Papa how to hold them up high, the twisty wet ropes that attach the babies to the blob. Why? And are they alive? They billow like they are on, off, on.

"Take these and tie them close"; Mama gives him string. Papa ties them close to the little bellies, and now cuts the ropes with our scissors.

The babies lie on Mama's stomach and they are crying, sharp, high cries like rabbits do when the owl catches them in the dark. Mama lifts up the first one; this is a girl, and the second one; this is a boy. Now Mama and Papa wrap each baby in the flannel squares. Papa snugs one baby on Mama's bosom, and the other one on the other side, and Mama lies back and looks glad and frazzled.

Papa is down on his knees beside her and his face is soft. The air in our whole house looks pink.

"Elizabeth", says Mama, "...and Marcus", they say together.



Susan Downe

ON SEEING LEONARDO'S ST. ANNE AND THE VIRGIN

If I had
had her,
I would have lounged
like the holy baby
naked in her lap, and she too

would be fearless, firm on her
fearless mother's sturdy knees (not iconic
Anne, but red-haired Maria Malvina,
scholar); I would

have seen eternity
from there: larks, herons, ferns
like frilly vases, all
the adorned days to come, and new lambs
quicker to stand than I, and I

would have turned, reached
up two hands, touched her smooth, dark
hair, and stroked two hands her brow,
ears, her warm and shining
hair, my lady cara,


Susan Downe

MY FATHER':S WEATHER

I find my father's letterhead
today, in a cardboard box whose edges
crumble as I touch;
his home
address walks quiet left
to right upon the page, without
his name, plain
black on white, a modest
typeface, and his

face is in repose - early summer early
morning after thinning Spanish onions
(stalked by the robin) in the yard. He writes

to answer pity he received
because my sister died with a scream. Whoever
wrote will have to work to read; his hand
is tight, he shortens
words like night
to nite and through to
thru, etcetera
etc. He may

have thought, as he ordered stock,
chose this font, and spelled
his street name fully out, someday
he would use it up and order more, but here

are forty sheets or so, and he
used up these seven years. Yet not

used up; see!
we ride the wide
wake of his fierce peacefulness.


Susan Downe

HANDS (AVALON PENINSULA)

There is something to know
about many hands
of wind slapping tamarack
and cuffing the dusty cotton fingers
of Indian Pipe beside the road - vigorous

hands shampooing unruly
heads of highbush berries crammed
in ranks between. We say
it is a giant coastal admonition, but
we do not know

how it is
with the hands of wind
and rooted living things, nor
how it is
with rooted things and rooted things, how
it is . with hands much less our hands.

Susan Downe

The Making and the Breaking

It's about the way that hands create things by both building and breaking. In order to make a drawing, ink lines and a picture must be created, but a pristine piece of paper is destroyed. When I work I use an xacto blade to cut and slice and discard as much as I use a brush and ink to draw. Hands can build and destroy and both are equally energetic, justifiable - or condemnable - practices.

Jennifer Robertson

genealogy of hands

afloat on a thin raft of light
in the upstairs bedroom
my father is a baby
his small body steadied
by his mother’s hand
he sits in a porcelain basin
in an inch of water

it’s summer and my grandmother is alive
she rinses the soapy water off his shoulder
with the water from her cupped hand
they don’t know about me
my grandmother’s baby-body
is travelling at the speed of light
thirty years away from the summer
morning when her mother bathed her
in water from another well

my hands lay buried in the future
between layers of mornings
afternoons and nights
and the hands of my sons
tiny as stamens
are held somewhere
as flowers are held
in the dreams of seeds
carried on pollen
riding on the heels of bumblebees

Julie Berry

"Our common language ~ music"

Students in a village of Cameroon create music with their hands and voices to celebrate the coming together of two worlds. As I stood in the middle of a valley, the purity of both the land and the people touched my soul. I can still hear the beautiful music these tiny hands and voices made.

Carissa MacLennan

Handprints

After half-an-hour's dusty drive from Los Alamos,
and another half-hour climb up a hot cliff
I found myself scrunched inside
a cave the size of a child's playhouse,
surprisingly warm and damp
as if corpses had started to break again.
Paintings on the slippery walls -
square horses, empty circles,
men made of burnt sticks.
And there beside me
a crinkled handprint, fingers spread.

Touch me, I said out loud
starting the miniature echoes
from their long stupors.
My palm and the rock both sweating,
I leaned forward, my flesh
doubling its hardness, smacking
against the wall, shattering
each small grain of loneliness.
Someone long ago touched me back.

Here and now, huddled
in what little is left of Ontario's fall
I stand by the living room window
palm prints smearing cool grey glass,
a kind of braille. Touch me:
as if someone might actually
drive down this street, make the long
climb out of their warm car
to reach me, lifelines mingling.

Is that a human being
at the window across the street
or just a stick of furniture
pressed too close to an empty curtain?
Over here, I wave, all those years of me
gathering into one small act.
After a lonely day, I lay a hard hand
on the place where my heart
chisels away at rock.
This fumbled stroke, another
smudge lost in the blur.

Barry Dempster,
The burning alphabet, Brick Books, 2005, with permission of the author