Simple Questions Concerning Hands
Neno Perrotta
The simple questions I want to ask
have everything to do with what I’m seeing:
Black water rolling through a storm,
boiling slow like an old man’s soup.
I want to know about your hands.
How your fingers wind my Silly clock
while my thumbs can only keep serious time.
And, is that paint or dirt under your nails?
My last lover was a farmer and a mother.
Her garden grew like a silent movie.
We watched it from the attic window while her
husband painted fences under a borrowed moon.
I never thought to ask her these questions.
Her hands were weary, broken time bombs.
Her eyes were mirrors on a blanket of clouds.
Her breath was never fruit or tea, but garlic.
But I need to know about your hands.
Why they’re so much older than mine.
Why I can see them without eyes or dreams.
So, answer me quickly. The night is nearly over.
There are dreams beneath my frozen feet.
Neno Perrotta has visited and drank coffee at several graduate schools. His poetry has appeared in The Quarterly, The Shenango Review, The Penguin Review,, and The New Kent Quarterly. He Plays the bongos and clarinet and wrote such songs as “Lawn Darts,” “Lawyers and Truckers,” and “Falls Church,Virginia,” and is the author of the collection Not One Thing About Science.
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