La Mano (The Hand)
Smooth hands are suspect.
I love the way your hands
snag my silk blouses.
Sandpaper calluses I kiss.
I have tortilla-making hands,
and fingernails with chipped red polish.
My hands are tattooed
with the ink of poems.
They touch moonlight
on your cheek while you sleep.
from, What She Saw in the Loteria Cards
Bottle Cap Press, 2025
Originally published in The Sierra Nevada Review
featured photograph: Stewart Ferebee Photography
To You. by Walt Whitman
LET us twain walk aside from the rest;
Now we are together privately, do you discard ceremony,
Come! vouchsafe to me what has yet been vouchsafed to none—Tell me the whole story,
Tell me what you would not tell your brother, wife, husband, or physician.
oh yeah, smooth hands are suspect… that’s right!
My hands are dirty from gardens work, embossed from big peaces of wood and bearing scars from my cat.