SWWIM sustains and celebrates women poets by connecting creatives across generations and by curating a living archive of contemporary poetry, while solidifying Miami as a nexus for the literary arts.

Essay on Hands

 

These hands ache from composing.
These hands are imperfect and arthritic.
These hands are dipped in hot paraffin wax.
These hands soak in pools of ice water.
Right now they seek warmth in the pockets 
of my jeans. Sandwiched between 
someone else’s hands they seek shelter.  
They explore. They dive into fleecy banks of hair. 
They have a masochistic desire to return 
to Sister Joyce’s sixth-grade English class 
jotting what seemed like worthless vocab, 
ink spilling from a Bic like bird droppings.
These hands want to inscribe the name 
of my first love across the sole of my shoes, 
to pry his mouth open and graffiti his tongue.  
These are praying hands. These are worshipping hands. 
They skim the smooth surface of rosary beads before bed. 
These are working hands. These are writing hands. 
They enjoy the luxury of a thick pen with cushy padding 
where thumb, index and middle finger rest. 
These hands produce squiggles burdened by meaning,
as there’s meaning in each small hand that stopped growing 
after middle school, each ring finger measuring 
a meager 4.5, same size as Abuela Gloria’s withered 
hands inside the coffin at Rivero Funeral Home 
where a thoughtless mortician wrapped a plastic rosary 
around her dead digits instead of the family approved one
from Spain that smelled of roses. I almost screamed 
when Mami tried to swap rosaries and untangle the stubborn 
string of cheap beads that clung to Abuela’s wrinkled hands 
the way the wrinkled roots of the orchid adhered 
to the bark of her avocado tree, like a needy lover. 
The first poem I wrote was about Gloria’s bulging 
nose and wild gray hair giving the impression 
she was a witch as she drew in her white notepad,
fruit trees branching from her hands as words branch 
from mine, hatch from a discomforting feeling  
akin to butterflies, which prompts me to stare at my hands, 
fumbling hands that can’t catch a football or open 
wine bottles, struggling hands, forgetful hands that lose 
car keys, misplace eye glasses somewhere in the house, 
beneath the bed perhaps, and it’s just a question of time 
before I find them, before I spot the elusive snakeskin 
silver clutch, the riddle of sentences revolving in my head, 
parts of speech kickboxing past clutter and dust, 
words discovered in an old letter I found rummaging 
for postage stamps in my father’s desk: I want to pass 
the G.E.D. to make my twelve-year-old daughter proud
.
Papi wanted to become an agronomist, but repaired 
typewriters and vacuums at Sears for thirty-five years. 
Washing dishes was his first Miami job. I’ve contemplated 
how soap suds felt between his fingers on forsaken stacks 
of china as the moon bathed the restaurant with its fractured light.  
He now owns a pool maintenance business.  
While typing I smell the chlorine on my father’s hands, 
disinfectant on mother’s as she clutches a paper towel 
to clean the kitchen counter and anything else 
because her cleaning, like my writing, is compulsive, 
because she dusts to extract sense from a senseless world,
because she is sixty and set in her ways,
though I’d like to see her kneeling in the garden, 
dirt trapped beneath fingernails where it belongs, 
soil smudged across those hands that pinched 
my side and ears, parted and braided hair,   
tied shoelaces and held my own, 
hands that stroked her swollen belly 
before I was born.

 


*This poem was a semi-finalist in the SWWIM For-the-Fun-of-It Contest.


Rita Maria Martinez loves all things Jane Eyre. Her poetry collection—The Jane and Bertha in Me (Kelsay Books)—is inspired by Charlotte Brontë’s fiery governess and infamous madwoman. The poet's work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and appears in publications like the Notre Dame Review, Ploughshares, and The Best American Poetry Blog. Her poetry also appears in the textbook Three Genres: The Writing of Fiction/Literary Nonfiction Poetry and Drama; in the anthology Caña Quemada: Contemporary Cuban Poetry in English and Spanish; and in the anthology Grabbed: Poets and Writers on Sexual Assault, Empowerment, and Healing. Martinez’s recent poetry raises awareness about the challenges and triumphs inherent in navigating life with chronic daily headaches and migraines. Martinez lives in Florida and earned an MFA in Creative Writing from FIU. Visit Rita's website at comeonhome.org/ritamartinez, follow her on Twitter @cubanbronteite, or on Instragram @rita.maria.martinez.poet





 

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