| Following is a poem from my book, Water at the Women's Edge. It is a self-contained section of a sequence of five poems called Hand of Fist, which documents causes and effects of domestic violence. The poem sequence, based upon a number of observations made over time, came into being as a result of a "prompt" generated by my Creative Writing Club. We took the title of a Nick Cave song, "Red Right Hand," and asked all club members to start with that image and write on... This is one fifth of my response. It has been printed by American Poetry Review and then reprinted in the Best of Texas Poetry anthology. Thanks to both publications. |
| Queen of Fist
We stole our mother’s lipstick, cherry red, the black mascara, sometimes shadow, powder, too, and worked around the opening the thumb and index finger make when hands are closed, as if to clutch a coin. First came lips, as lush as honeysuckle. Eyes came next, most often blue, with eyebrows arched like chapel roofs. We venerated change. One time I wrapped a rag around my wrist and crowned the whole thing with a wad of cotton gauze. She looked at first like some grim saint— in Catholic school we’d read such things, seen photographs— a mummy martyred to virginity. The flesh would mold in catacombs but, we could rest assured, such souls as those would blaze in heaven, God the Father’s truest, purest flames. We boys had other, earthly plans. We stuck a cigarette from mother’s pack between the puppet’s supple lips, and made her oui and ooo-la-la! like wild Parisian ladies on TV, and made her coochie coochie-coo like Charo in her silk captivity. We made her wink and smooch, though gagging every time she did, and I had danced my puppet breathlessly until my thumb began to ache when I became possessed of what I’d only later loathe to understand. I stripped away the gown of rag. I wiped and scraped and scoured until the face of beatific lust, a fist I’d innocently made, became a shapeless, voiceless smear of tan and black and red. |
