My Mother's Hands, and: We Got That Swing
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My Mother’s Hands
Plain-sized and proudly beautiful, gentle yet not weak, warm with raised green veins and tiny lacy scars. Thick nails evenly ridged, cut short and sometimes painted; wide pink palms, wide knuckles. Dusk skin over the backs, not just sunned-brown but canesugar year-round brown, canesugar depth I wish I had inherited. My own slim hands, girl small and moving like ballet, however fierce with cuts and calluses and tan allover but between the fingers, are very strong but never strong as hers.
We Got That Swing
Even as birds racket at the dawn we blow the speakers alone we spin in someone else’s living room, dried cups, the card game, and sleep ignored. We dance like mineral mud boiling, honey hands on honey skin. Swinging ourselves to old people’s music we are young, you lead I follow laughing and trail my fingers around your hard back. The distance between our waists and shoulders grows or shrinks but always we hold on taut. [End Page 270]
Dennell Reynolds recently received her bachelor's degree in East Asian studies from the University of Chicago. She is currently studying Mandarin in Beijing, China, and her poetry has been published in Sliced Bread Magazine and the Sidwell Friends Quarterly.
