Now that I think about it,
I'm not entirely sure
my neighbor had hands
of flesh, they were always cloaked
in yellow kid gloves,
they may have been bionic,
or constructed from wood.
Maybe his hands died
when he was young, so all
he had were ghosts for hands.
It's for this reason I'm suspicious
of hidden things: what are you keeping
from me under that bun,
Second Grade Teacher?
Or, are you sure your name is Huey,
man who greets me at the Home Depot?
As you can see, I only consider
nametags in the context of artifice,
like leprechauns, they're a construct of guilt.
The retail corporation feels bad
about paying Huey so few dollars
an hour, so they allow him
to brandish a piece of plastic on his left breast.
Better for him to sell me some dishwashers
or fake dandelions to place
on the table in my breakfast nook.
To hide from my cat or spouse or bowl
of cereal I forgot to clean up yesterday.
Jared Walls is an MFA candidate at Texas State University, where he serves as poetry editor for Front Porch Journal.
His poems have appeared in publications such as Willow Springs, Hunger Mountain, elimae and Pank. He lives with
his wife Caroline in a Reagan-era duplex in Austin, where he blogs about cats and hipsters at
someliesistole.wordpress.com.
| Ghosts for
Hands was written about two months ago. That's around the minimum
amount of time I let a poem stew before I decide it's about as
finished as it's going to be. If I remember correctly, I cut the
ending. I have an initial tendency for closure, most of the time it 's
overwrought, so I go to great lengths to step out of that comfortable
context, the notion that the poem needs a tidy ending or that the
initial rhetoric need be revisited. |
