Rows of Hands

6
scaphoid

a comma-shaped half between day light and dusk, dirt like air—is breathable and not bone, human wrist, located in a somewhere town on a somewhere beach in the first row of a memory
ship shape up like a—

also called navicular





5

semilunar

crescent-shaped for that is the middle warm breaded, broken into pieces to toss proximal row between the scaphoid and the triquetral seagulls that swoop, feathered with wind a deep concavity a dip between wing bones on the distal surface your shape is shifting and tossed

called also lunate




3

cuneiform

it is on the ulnar side the cliff bending and standing throw something off but does not articulate it wishes to be is pyramid-shaped is ledge-less, a swift drop off formed from Latin which means "three-cornered"

called also triquetral





8

pisiform

a bone little-finger side not eight but 10 or 2 counting only little resembling a fanned out existing beach, splay of— a pea in size /shape a multitude of grit a pitvotal moment, a final stage developed last

called also—




4

trapezium

a quadrilateral with no parallel sides sand dollar white and oblong a multiple star in the constellation of Orion bone on the thumb side a bone in the distal row base the thumb, the oceans edge met with dry sand tipping out, gleaming

called also greater multangular





7

trapezoid

the base of the forefinger quadrilateral having two parallel sides your juvenile plume sandpiper a small bone a small bird, long beak in the wrist daintily scurry feet do not flick it now near the base of the index finger run straight for dry ground

called also lesser multangular





1

os magnum

abruptly enlarged and globular globe like encompassing more than wet, then water a rounded, knoblike end Forming a headlike mass or dense cluster the flowers of ice plants bloom and blossom coating an articulation between stiff/spiky and the bursting through of magenta a step off a drop down

also called capitate





2

unciform

small, hook-shaped driftwood is light flight like bone of the wrist, a bone on the little-finger side, second row sucker punched and hooked on a tip

also called hamate

*This poem actually appears with the first 4 poems in a row and the second 4 appearing directly below the first 4. Therefore, when you read you can read multiple ways in multiple combinations. If I was more html savvy I would put a fancy table in and then you could see what I meant, rather than merely imagining it.

Wooden Boys with Bendable Legs

Little Wooden Boy or Pinocchio or Poor Little One in a non-history city



Like when you have too much animal blood lying around
Or under a door frame, inside a tight fitting onclave
Seeping into cracks, little wooden boy legs

Bursting like flowers from so much happiness
But the Two Others were not flowering but dying
Weed tendrils focused on suffocation
Poor Little One had stolen the nutrients,
the bursting belonged to him because he said it was so.

This is the only thing he is sure of

There is no History City, there are no malnourished dogs
Little One is a liar.
Tumorous butterflies fly but they fly with swollen middles
Zig zag like

Two steps further is 200 million miles
wooden legs stained in blood can not make it
more than 1.9999 million steps before they splinter
into pieces and Others use them to play fetch

delusional, grandiose tantrums will ensue
flaying of legs and necks are close to
real limb-ful moments
but limb-ful is not wholesome
when the sky is dipping into the ocean
and the island that you have been floating on
bobbing like a cork
is really a giant fish belly
swollen and white like a knee bone

after reading Kim Rosenfield, Trama

New

What's on your reading list for 2006?

I find that during a break I consume fiction at a rapid rate. In the last week or so I've finished the The Better of McSweeney's, Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee, and In the Garden of the North American Martyrs by Tobias Wolff. A large stack sits by my bed too numerous to name. But I need more fiction recommendations because school starts soon and once it starts fiction gets put on hold.

I'm in the middle of countless poetry books: Povel by Geraldine Kim, Nets by Jen Bervin, Vice by Carla Harryman, Why/Why Not by Martha Ronk, Locale by Jessica Grim, The Hounds of No by Lara Glenum and the literary journals: Phoebe & American Letters & Commentary. I know there's more but again they're sitting in a separate pile on the floor near my bed.

I often find books in my bed under the covers, books that I will end up looking for for days. Do you fall asleep with your books?