The Touch
 

    "Some of the nation’s top libraries have books bound
    in human flesh from centuries past" -- AP headline

The poor, the unclaimed,
    the convicted — their skin
       stretched, tanned

to leather, the covers
    of anatomy books,
       morality tales,

a lengthening of life
    as a stranger’s fingertip
       runs down the spine,

their golden pores
    spread across the laps
       of clinicians and students

for whom touch is
    an acquired art, and you,
       my girl, squirm

in my lap, your roan curls
    a curiosity of tangles
       as my fingers pinch

defiant knots, remove them
    like scabs from a sore.
       You don’t cry

at the tearing: you stretch
    to the window, press your palm
       to its smothering cold

watch a robin drive
    its beak in dry grass,
       master the worm

in its wild and quiet way,
    as wild and quiet
       as a book.

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Marybeth Rua-Larsen lived and worked in Lancaster, PA for 9 years and shared the local midwife and birthing center with some of the families who lost daughters in the Nickel Mines tragedy. She has since moved back to her native Massachusetts and has had poems published or forthcoming in Blue Unicorn, Color Wheel, The Worcester Review and others. She was also a finalist for the 2007 Philbrick Poetry Award.  

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autumn 2007 | kaleidowhirl
books and chapbooks from authors in this issue