your hands
my father’s hands
meat hands
rye hand salt hand
swampberry
stained hands
in my father’s hand
my father’s gloves
in my grandmother’s grave
my father’s gloves
a bad omen
handle of my father’s handsaw
hands apt drugs fit and time agreeing
our tongues are hands
our accidents thoughts
your medicine is dread
and excessive talk
I am spendthrift
I am ragpicker
under limestone
I found a bad omen
between two hands
a prayer whispered
the sound of a frightened dog
handle of my father’s hammer
moods swing tasks lead
hands shake fold cross
the body is received
on your tongue my hand
whereupon
we eat and whine
beware heavy thoughts
the elegies of brides
a passageway denied us
I am woods and emigrant
in the heart of an alphabet
for a pound of oats
I got a basin of a liter
a gallon of cold water
a length of thread
and an intimate knowledge
of all you are not
without speaking
what if I were to say
face to face
hand in hand
the very thing I know
you are thinking
stay permanent

(I kept telling myself kept sitting myself down
at the kitchen table for instance and kept saying
don’t be so needy if you hold on to something
so tight I started to think what was it a bird
I mean if you let something go and it doesn’t
for instance a disloyal dog I mean unleashed
but I wasn’t listening the whole time I wasn’t paying
attention because I was tucked into that almond
shaped part of the brain where I didn’t care
what the rest of me had to say because it had
nothing to do with any of that or anyone else
at the base of an artificial mountain near a deep
ravine I was a man on all fours about to receive
the finishing cuff to his spine and I was the one
who delivers saying I am cousin to the rake
the bale lifter as of tonight you will turn your body
in a direction and travel with resolve)

Your title.
Your paradise.
Your trap face.
There is no end to.
Your showjumping.
Your hair in a faraway land.
Your meticulous hands.
Your dumbshow your noise.
You ride herd.
You’ll never find Albany.
Your sashweight.
Your staining room voice.
Your fidelity.
Your freedom to decide.
Your body says.
There is no end to.
Your ambition.
A moth to a lamb.
Your help desk tactics.
Your old fashioned hunger.
Your body.
Your body.
Your body.
Has been in the woodshed.
I believe in the woodshed.