Palm Reading by Jennifer K Dick

After Cole Swensen’s poem “Fingers: Alignment” from The Book of a Hundred Hands (U of IA) (Swensen’s poem is online at: http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/cole-swensen)

We (read I, read the eye of the) cannot congregate

declare (I do) the constellation (I’m bound to)
blind, blunder (I’ve always known it), but

you have never before (have you?)
complied

with the people I think I’ve seen every day,

(have I seen, am I, and then to see is, at sea)

and then of the people I
four or five days a month

a mourning those I say twice

I’ve known (I have been known to)

(I know you, too) by this.

Texture.

and then once, and then I knew (was known) by no one

Suddenly, you say, sudden

crowded

integrating

interiorate

catapult

integral

This is just what I’d imagined
you knew
of sky, and my lost roads maps
wending our pathways out

overt gardens, overt landscapes scraped

shaped into his gardens

(you do know who I speak of? Ours, and hours)

I hear my voice

(yours)

This is an echo
this echo is this

is echo’s attempt to speak

etc.

I’m (she is) (you are) (we may be becoming) blind,

so

who can only see me
within their hands?

.