Turning to the Touch
Poem by Radu Dima •
Photo by Vicki Day
 the hands leave the body. fall from the thick stalks of wrists, and the wrists turn gray. when the fingertips rise from the page the page flutters upwards and turns yellow with sunlight, or disease. the hands in the forest, flat against the dark skin of trees, with twigs in their hair, naked among the leaves, grown feral; or clasped in dim bedrooms, cloudy with perfumes, scalded by the warm mist that might hide at its heart a sun. the hands groping under the gas light for a perfect loneliness, or crouching in the streets with weapons. looking up addresses in dirty phonebooks, baffled by the names they can no longer read. the hands roving hungry in gutters or the huge halls of Venice, lean from their long fast, trying to get further, trying to get to a world no one has yet touched. |