She had
emigrated to New York when she wrote my hands, and I was in New York again
again looking at my hands when I typed my
hands. She wrote two little bits of my body on the next line. She had
children at this point. I typed the words in English on the next line and didn’t
have children and then did and brought two
little bits up to the first line with my
hands. In her time, ideas sat on different lines, but in mine—living
against being shown where to rest. Is that me now or now? I decided now.
*
She wrote
that hands are two little bits of my body I’m not ashamed to show, and I said
that and then said I’m never ashamed to
show. Does not mean never? No. Yes. Never makes the positive of the negative happen. I change my
changes using the following excuses: I’m more like her now. I’m more like me
now. I’m now, and she was explosively then.
*
She wrote my
hands with fingers, like the branches of coral, and I typed that and then later
typed With fingers—the branches of coral
and went on shaving off the markers of distance to close the thoughts in me. I
used to try to hide my strange hands but now I want to touch everything I can.
*
She wanted to
touch some things she shouldn’t have. She wrote a word that was impossible to
find in any Yiddish dictionary, but was found in a French one. Fingers were
like the thoughts of blank question mark and now are the thoughts of a nymphomaniac. She reached and reached
outside of her tongue so her hands could reach away from her life in words. I
typed nymphomaniac as myself and then
again as myself as her and met her there reaching toward her hands.
*
My Hands
My hands, two
little bits
of my body
I'm never
ashamed to
show. With fingers—
the branches
of coral,
fingers—two
nests
of white
serpents,
fingers—the
thoughts
of a
nymphomaniac.
Jennifer Kronovet is the author of the poetry collection Awayward. She co-translated The Acrobat, the selected poems of Yiddish writer Celia Dropkin. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in A Public Space, Aufgabe, Best Experimental Writing 2014 (Omnidawn), Bomb, Boston Review, Fence, the PEN Poetry Series, Privacy Policy: The Anthology of Surveillance Poetics (Black Ocean), and elsewhere. She has taught at Beijing Normal University, Columbia University, and Washington University in St. Louis. A native New Yorker, she currently lives in Guangzhou, China.
the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan
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