What We Make by Hand
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- What We Make by Hand
—for my father, and what he made as a boy
Until I found this book, I never thoughtYou cared for words. Hinges of brass holdThe plywood covers that hold poems you cutFrom newspapers. Most of the times you calledFor me when I was small, I'd done somethingWrong. On the front you burned a scene of beachAnd waves, a palm tree, a dark sun that hangsWhirling in clouds of mist. When I touchThese pages, a whisper dry as your silenceStirs through me, and I think that what we makeBy hand tells the life we hope for. The chanceTo please you—to fashion things from wood likeYou could—never came. Awkward with tools, I shapeWhat life I can, a finger to my lips. [End Page 385]
Michael Spence has recent work in Agni Online, The Chariton Review, The Sewanee Review, and Southwest Review. His poem "The Bus Driver's Threnody," which first appeared in The Hopkins Review, was reprinted in the anthology New Poets of the American West and selected for its Editor's Choice Award. His latest book is Crush Depth (Truman State University Press).
