Hand, The

American Poetry Review, The, Jan/Feb 1997 by Lima, Frank

The hand is all heart. It hops around like a toad to prove its dexterity. It presses your pockets on cold winter days and, in its profound state, polishes an apple for you. Silently it waits in the subways when it rains and is more of a hand than ever. It emerges from your humid coat, like a swollen hyena with its rancorous juices, to offer the young lady next to you a flat heart.

Of course you get a slap and someone's boring hand dials the police, who arrive with fat hand The hand requires few words. It howls, repels odors and keeps the body of its lover from becoming slippery. A drop of water splashes in the crater of its palm, Merlin's pure lapis in the middle of the night. The lover's hand imagines itself a lover in the flabbiness of a perspiring torso, rolling in the wash of sighs. Armless, the hand spanks and slides around the mass of the sexual object with giant fingers that appear like rubber slugs in the moonlight.