It’s been a while
Since I felt the pull
Of an empty page
My callous has softened
The ink-stain dulled
To a faded bruise
As if this were not
A tattoo
Of my own design
The leaking pen
And over-tight grip
Leftovers from childhood training
As emotions spill out
Between the lines
To blur their way
Toward the clarity of words
Where thoughts begin to take shape
And letters form
Exposing my inner turmoil
With the cool logic
Of too many cups of coffee
Too little sleep
And an over-abundance of sugared memory
I return to the paper and pen
A criminal haunting
The same scenes
Scribbled by heart
Until I am cleansed
And nothing
Not the rain in August
Nor my endless nostalgia
Can keep me down.
Ink
Love poem to my hands
These small scars and subtle lines
The marks of canula and razor blade
This triangle of raised skin from an
Unlikely first foray at false nails
Tell my story better than palmistry.
Strong hands, cast in my grandfather’s mould
The broad span of a peasant-pianist
Clasping my mother’s work ethic
My grandmother’s curved third joint.
My hands are rebels, weatherbeaten
Eschewing my father’s manicured elegance
With overgrown cuticles, nails kept short.
Functional fingers, well-muscled
And only two permanent ink stains
On the right hand, unmoved since school;
The wart on my left a source of teasing
My witch mark, mocked
By ignorant children. I would not change
The fine hairs on my fourth knuckle
Hidden by the ring I sometimes wear
For the world.
Linguistic seduction
There is no order to a poem
No demands made or met
Paper and ink come without shackles
And yet, language has power,
A verse may hold you captive, spellbound,
Words browbeat you, leaving you raw and crying
Lead you to change your opinion,
Mend your ways, even fall in love.
Naturally there is a word for this,
Allowing us to pass sentence on such a construct,
Both praising and damning a few lines,
Summing up the power of written thought
In three syllables, at a stroke.
One dirty, descriptive word:
Compelling.
Katherine Shirley 