We are all limbs attached
To the idea of being a Human—²
The Spirit likes to dress up like this: ten
Fingers, ten Toes, Shoulders and all the rest—³
We are Alive in every Limb—
With feeling to the finger tips—⁴
My legs are Towers between
Which—a new World is passing!⁵
Her arms spread in Amazement
As to where her legs might’ve gone—⁶
Our worn out hands, Coarser
Than ever, reach Elsewhere …⁷
Those things which you so laughingly call hands are in fact two
Brown Butterflies fluttering across the Pleasure they give my body.⁸
My hands are now indiscriminately Dangerous, now Vagabond
And Prodigal, now Cruel and Careless, now without Remorse or
Forgiveness, now reaching up with Longing, now clasped in Prayer,
Now feeling for Reassurance, now pleading my Desires.⁹
Free hands seek a greater Freedom!¹⁰
¹ Wilfred Owen, Insensibility
² Lisa Gill, Post-Traumatic Rainstorm
³ Mary Oliver, Poem
⁴ Frank Desprez, Lasca
⁵ Audre Lorde, Now that I Am Forever with Child
⁶ Mary Gaitskill, The Arms and Legs of the Lake
⁷ Paul Celan tr. Pierre Joris, Quaywall-rest
⁸ Nikki Giovanni, The Butterfly
⁹ Jamaica Kincaid, Wingless
¹⁰ Langston Hughes, Freedom’s Plow