Eleni Sikelianou
The Hand Therapist
In the hand world, all sens- ation is sutured at the tips. Flavus digitalus profundus A chiasmus, a crossing, she says, we call it Zone 2, No Man's Land, tap taps the knuckle. I know horses are making the crossing from the superficial to the deep tendons where they make the X after the bone, thirsty. She wants me to know but maybe She doesn't want me to know too much. When I describe the world this is about the body. Your finger is making layers and layers of scarring like 40 strata of stiff Saran wrap, enough for New Jersey. You're making enough for 10 bodies, I'm trying to slow that drapery down and smooth it so things can slide around. Anne told me Cecil Taylor once swaddled himself in Saran wrap and wandered the halls of the Boulderado otherwise naked. I believe the manager asked him to leave or at least return to his room. The body can manage a sliver of glass but there are other foreign entities that flummox it, the Hand Therapist says and my hand heats on the table like Cecil Taylor's wrapped physique under the ceiling lights. She taps my finger's tip This is the most sensate part of your body. Open. In the hand world she says again the tendons cross deep in the flesh She is my Hand Therapist with an accent she brought with her from Virginia just as you would a pocket full of acorns. Dreamt: split rail fences, healing scars, railroad tracks. The next time I see her the Hand Therapist cries and tells me to wear gloves all the time. Then she says your scar tissue feels real good. Must feel like Cecil Taylor in cellophane tapping on 88 tuned drums but my stitched finger drops the stitch into decay and can no longer open the good jar of tomatoes. What damage the hand can wreak on the world the world gives back to it.
First published in Timber.
SOME OF US got lucky
Some of us got sick
Some of us got mothers
Some of us got rich
Some of us learned everything
from the cities stretching below the skies
where women & children & men desire
Proud Bird (Diner, LAX) whatever it is they desire
& what have a right to
what get.
First published in the Jack Kerouac School 40 Year Anniversary Anthology