Arrogant Hands

Arrogant Hands Those soldier toys that come in see-through bags, those small green plastic men with readied guns, do not have gaping wounds, or ligatures to tie off flesh, and bind up screaming veins. They have no arrogant hands that lurk and skulk, phantom hands, so accurate with pain, that boast like marines. While I lay thinking of cameo creme makeup, flat black, leaf green. Dream of touching myself, finding my arms in grocery carts beside the hamburger, in gutters by the side of the hospital, wrapped up like presents I cannot open. They do not have ethereal dreams of sisters who make love to their hands with kisses or study the relationship of brooms and dustpans while peroxided cleaning ladies avoid them with their eyes. They do not count for anesthesia, or have wheaty-haired nurses lean over them to hang signs above the bed, "N.P.O.," they do not swallow Diazepam or drink in morphine. They do not drown in creeks, bend like fetuses to writhe with peritonitis, suck on ice-chips, hunger for M.R.E.S, they just hang on dusty shelves at Porky Lane, or set up camp beneath throw rugs waiting to be stepped on or vacuumed up, they have no white-teethed mothers to mourn when they are lost or misplaced. They do not reach for things they cannot hold. —Rosemary Pitman-Redmon 52 ...