The Hand Therapist

Eleni Sikelianos

Eleni is the author of eight poetry collections, including Make Yourself Happy (2017), The Loving Detail of the Living & the Dead (2013), Body Clock (2008), and The California Poem (2004). She is also author of the hybrid memoirs You Animal Machine (The Golden Greek) (2014) and The Book of Jon (2004). Her work negotiates the boundary between poetry and prose and other forms of documentation, including visual art and notebook writing. 

You can read our interview with Eleni, too.

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, she 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 she would a pocket full of acorns.

Dreamed: 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.

Issue 2