On the other hand by Nancy Dzina

After Jennifer K. Dick's poem "Palm Reading" after Cole Swensen’s poem “Fingers: Alignment”

Someone else sees

in their hands our eyes

no longer (ours). This fading’s

not so bad, so long

ago apparent, no need

to rush things, after all

we have light years

before our map carries

much less names.

                           Invisible

petals drop, the flower

bursts to finish, the floor

holds a different notion of

where we are in the story.

The waggle of pages, time

gesture time: gently just-so cast

inner layer tender out then mend

one for another, knowing

and knowing not what hint

of rock may steady then break

any drift of witness. Even

interlocked phalanges

spring from open palms

unbrailled with potential.

When I was a kid, though I never

saw it, I knew the congregation

of the steepled church of hands

could become unpeopled

at the blink of a trigger guard.

Try to disturb my fist.

Good luck with that.

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?

.

TATTERED after Cole Swensen's "And Are Ghosts"

After Cole Swensen's "And Are Ghosts" from 4 Oct 2007, this from that same day: Tattered by Jennifer K Dick

and three days it took her……….........……whole
haunting inside the sidling….marrow
seascapes, waves,….……..….landmasses….powdered over

distances elongate through snow……..……a gasp
hovers white in the night………..air a ghost
of what architecture………….she………...might’ve

gone to, touched………..……..wooden siding, that
aluminium roof’s red tile……….…….angling
11th century—Italian?………or newer—nearer—inside

the beads fingered……….a code………….of her passing
coddled….…against the freezing blades…..…winded
grass, hollowed corn stalks…..…yellow wheat

fields’ white…………..……..and the waves
she pressed lips to………whispered………inhaled the rose
to grow back to………………….as if to sprout

yet, to rewind him…….…..there,……..…along mottled
pew-rows, a bony hand….arthritic
gnarled uncanny recanting…………………..softly

to the pebbles…………here……….….time’s crunching
miles and miles……………...….in her breath
night or……....…..the blank……..…….....road filling, billows

harrowing……….…..of his stated prairie………of her farms
opening pages reading………….….lines from psalms
voice that ricochets...to fade….…..to bones………sanded flat