Poem

Brendan Babish

UPON A SEVERED HAND

I guess you never expected to sit atop a stranger's bookshelf,
floating in a mason jar filled with formaldehyde.
Maybe you never expected to be dead at all, and only signed
an organ donor card for the self-satisfaction.
I suppose we are intimately acquainted,
I have handled your insides,
yet I wonder if your touch has ever made a lady tremble.

I met a woman named Misty;
She dances in a club downtown.
She can do a split and a headstand.
She studies Wicca. She has a tattoo.
She is more beautiful than the most beautiful horse.

I have seen her without the glitter, the paint and the lube.
I am lucky because I am allowed to stare
and she is not scared.
I have been invited to her trailer.
In her living room there are two human skulls—
one on the television, the other on an end table.
I told her I could get her more, and she seemed skeptical,
until I showed her my student I.D.

Misty didn't believe there could be two hundred and six bones in the human body.
I laid her down and named them all,
taking special care with her feet and speckled toes.
She laughed like a maniac.
Her touch gave me a rash.

I have been in her bed, once,
when we looked though old high school yearbooks.
I thought she would never forgive me for saying
how young she once was.

Where I'm from love is measured by sacrifice:
broken glass, a fatted calf, a renunciation.
I can only offer my hand; twenty-seven bones; five digits;
three layers of skin; and two fingers crossed
for luck.

Brendan Babish

Brendan Babish was born and raised in the hippie commune that is Ithaca, NY (hackey sack and hemp capital of the Western Hemisphere). He moved away at age 17 and has spent the intervening years trying to hide his affinity for patchouli and utopian ideology, with moderate success. He is currently pursuing his master's degree in literature and creative writing at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California.

Return