Robert Hirschfield: Hands

Their hands were too loud,

or whatever they were,

molding cankers of hair,

going after buttons dangling like time.

One called herself sister,

another sister-in-law.

They wanted her to become

a hammock again.

In the gap between sister-in-law and sister,

she spied the flutter of a city

up from the pit

like Joseph

without his coat of bruises,

packaged and sold by his brothers,
but saved by his mad dreams.

 
Selah.

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_{Robert Hirschfield‘s poems have appeared in Salamander, The Moth, Stand, Ink Sweat and Tears, Vallum, Noon and other publications.}