HAND


urbane consortium of fingers

plotting the exclusion

and stretching far away

from the crude and calloused brawn

of a sweaty Alberta Badlands palm



palm bland as prairie

life line rivers running sweat

sticky, never loving fingertips

with their excusable arrogance



narcissistic in their dexterity

a cabal of digits opposable

and at odds

with the steadfast thumb

that loneliest stone giant

of Easter Island



reckless lovemaking

in a handshake

the shameless eroticism

of a mundane gesture

and all the while

extremities of handspan

proliferating apartheid states

across the epidermal plain






FOREST FIRE


No chemical retardant

could ever extinguish

that forest fire

of hair atop her head,

that carrot-coloured floss of flame

that singes my curious eyes,

gnawing with blazing jaw

into the aged and dried logs

of her sorrow.



Her feeble tears

only fizzle out to vapor,

drops on a ocean

of insatiable combustion.



And watching her with the darting

black eyes of a whitetail,

I blindly obey the instinct

that lies like curdled guilt in my gut,

commanding me to flee

any heat I cannot understand.






ROCK BASS


As men and beer bottles

held sweating contests,

as the German Shepherd

held like an emerald

mantis

waiting to pull a fallen

fish head

to his passionate embrace,

as I, on cedar planks,

pined for the cool

of neighbor's pool,

we cleaned perch.

Some bass.

Fillet-knives too long

for boys

severed flesh

like malicious ice skates

over plump childhood pinkies,

and I cranked

the skinning machine,

peeling scale from meat,

like a starved ape

peeling plantains.

Fish shivered

at first touch of steel

as we did

when first the pools opened.

Innards were slopped into pails.

Once, I wormed my finger

into the pea-pod chest cavity

of a rock-bass, so deep

that when I retrieved it

autumn was upon us,

and I, ages older,

sat at my desk pretending not to

think of piled guts rotting

unsupervised in the backfield.



© Jesse Ferguson 2004