Recollection
- Recollection
Casey Patrick, poetry
In the story, she cuts off her hands—no,in the story, she outwits the devil but losesher hands or her father grows desperate andsevers them clean. Or. A maiden standsbetween a man and what he wants. And.Each version leads here: she walksinto the world with her handsstrapped to her back. Maybe they wavebehind her like sheets sleeping on the line.Using her teeth she solves the problem of hungerwhile the hands hang there. Maybethey jitter shadow puppets on the wallswhile she naps. Later she's queen. She hasher unattached hands, open and useless,cargo of once, things were different. Sometimesthe hands grow back. Her body counts problemsall on its own. Her hands all on their own clap [End Page 174] for each bird that swoops by. Freight ofnow I have new habits of touch. Countless versionsof this story are true. In the nightthey move about her room, dancing. [End Page 175]
casey patrick's poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in The Pinch, Passages North, RHINO, Green Mountains Review, and others. She has received fellowships from Vermont Studio Center and Hub City Writers Project, and was selected as the runner-up for the 2018 Pinch Literary Award in Poetry and finalist for the 2018 Brittany Noakes Poetry Award. A graduate of Eastern Washington University's MFA program, she is working on her first collection.
