Hands, Lawrence Blake (September 2026)

Hands

1.        

Outside, the air sounds of javelinas

jostling in fear and stringing cries

across the sharp January wind.

This is death music — hunters’ hymns

groaning an artificial throat-clear

before dropping from a silent sky.

Dogs bark before the splash, and red

blooms against the backdrop of stars

eking a low light across the air

strip’s sands. Necks buckling under

the crunch of a thoughtless falcon’s thump

outside the tower. As the bombs arrive,

a truck peels off to relieve the controllers

and a man with a Boston lilt orders

the planes to take off. I watch

and hold the cooling barrel of a gun

like I grip my niece’s hand at the park.

 

2.   

     

Youth is green stick awe

trapped inside a vigour

that compels risk and impatience.

His freedom was found at night

taking in the fire

that perched on dark clouds

divorcing themselves slowly

from sentinel mountains.

The safety of a bunker

exited by young wonder.

 

The guard, a child of Y2K,

slips out iron entryway

as a prowling menace drops.

Its pieces fractured by flak.

Ragged embryos of violence

tumble and twist from heaven

to bead in fans across grass.

 

This, this is where his world ends.

Joining with shards from the sky,

a thigh. Opened to the rain.

Unfurling the nerve sheath

which twangs with his agency

and fails to pull the foot

into a race for twenty-two.

 

When his brother alights

from the purring truck at my patch

of frost-scorched mountain blades,

I spill my reach into the wound,

seeking purchase on the tether

that runs the length of the leg,

carrying the heart’s tacky

promises in pulses

across my shaking hand.

 

3.   

     

Incomprehensible

to the knot of a knuckle

or the buckling sinew

of a strained embrace between men

are the brook tones of river birds:

honey for the busy ear.

Fingers don’t hear their snap;

palms are oblivious agents

in this clap’s concussion

Does the body know our speech?

 

Those impenetrable

consonants of your tongue:

the beyanî baş or kaka

chortled in a March predawn

are opaque stresses of wind

bleeding between rose bushes

which strain to the noontime sun

before the scissors grab

at the promise of a bud.

 

We all writhe in a fugue,

liminal exercise

practiced on a cot or bed

before the dreams arrive

to promise home.

Boston, or Toronto.

Kirkuk or small-town Ohio.

Our hope bends away from wilting

grass, with a wet bandage roll

unfurling in fuel-rainbowed air.

Where they took you on that ride

from the coordinate plot

of an unthinking Celaeno

is unknown. Lost to the dark.

 

4. 

       

And instead of home, I dream

of your dried, steady hand bound

against your mother’s.

As though a prayer is passed

from that press of her flesh.

 

Answered for her when you were born.

 

Kaka, kaka - do you hear her?

You were how her life began.