we touch like cripples
Joseph Kerschbaum

(The arms are dull butter knives. Rounded at the ends

like baseball bats. No hands: unable to cling,

to grasp with urgency. Able to embrace

but don’t. No fingers mean no music can be played. Opening doors

is extracting confessions from the innocent. Hard-fought, meaningless.

Shame is elicited from breathing. Stay at arms length

like careful doctors. The arms, trying to carve braille

into the foreheads of blind women. The deaf

can’t hear car bombs removing the faces of buildings

or the hum of bees. With no one speaking

is there a difference? The handless long for sign language.

Arms waving, trying to signal passing ships that aren’t there.)

© 2007 Joseph Kerschbaum