what happened to my hands
I swear they’re not mine
they
look
like
my grandmas
what happened
you see my face
I don’t see
all the time
just a few minutes in the morning
and an occasional glimpse
when I wash
these hands
but
these hands I see a lot of
like right now
I’m mesmerized
I used to keep them all dolled up
fake nails
lots of cream
but lately I’ve deemed them
working hands
and
they look it
they have wrinkles
wrinkles and knobby knuckles
broken jagged nails
ragged cuticles
skin that just stays up
when pinched
and
they seem foreign to me
these hands
that I know so well
these hands that have faithfully done
all that I’ve asked of them
deserve
reverence
and yet
I cringe to look at what they’ve become
old lady hands
me
with old lady hands
unbelievable
but
hey they get the job done
measuring just six inches
these hands
can
rock
the world
maybe I’ll get
a manicure
ha
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Reviews of "these hands"
Reviewed by na na (Reader)
Reviewed on October 29, 2002
You poetry is deep, intense, and brilliant. As are you. Love it and you. Bill Hugs
Reviewed by Gregory Sonn (Reader)
Reviewed on October 29, 2002
Hi Josie,
I wrote something very similar about seeing my wife's hands that now are looking like her mother's. Time rushes by doesn't it?
Youth is indeed wasted on the young. Good stuff. Gregg
Do they have green polish the color of Neptune hair.... love this .
Neptune
Reviewed by josephine wootten
Reviewed on October 29, 2002
wow
wow
wow
dear alex i've a sad wont to forever hang up my pen, such beauty here from rimbaud, so majestic almost a crime to appear on the same page as my meager scratchings.
beautiful
thank you
josie
Reviewed by Alex
Reviewed on October 29, 2002
Rimbaud has a great poem about hands. Here's the English translation:
Jeanne-Marie's Hands
Jeanne-Marie has strong hands; dark hands tanned by the summer, pale hands like dead hands. Are they the hands of Donna Juana? Did they get their dusky cream colour sailing on pools of sensual pleasure? Have they dipped into moons, in ponds of serenity? Have they drunk heat from barbarous skies, calm upon enchanting knees? Have they rolled cigars, or traded in diamonds? Have they tossed golden flowers at the glowing feet of Madonnas? It is the black blood of belladonnas that blazes and sleeps in their palms.
Hands which drive the diptera with which the auroral bluenesses buzz, towards the nectars? Hands which measure out poisons? Oh what Dream has stiffened them in pandiculations? Some extraordinary dream of the Asias, of Khenghavars or Zions? These hands have neither sold oranges nor become sunburnt at the feet of the gods: these hands have never washed the napkins of heavy babies without eyes.
These are not the hands of a tart, nor of working women with round foreheads burnt by a sun which is drunk with the smell of tar, in woods that sink of factories. These are benders of backbones; hands that never work harm; more inevitable than machines, stronger than carthorses! Stirring like furnaces, shaking off all their chills of fear, their flesh sings Marseillaises, and never Eleisons!
They could grasp your necks, O evil women; they could pulverize your hands, noblewomen; your infamous hands full of white and of carmine. The splendour of these hands of love turns the heads of the lambs! On their spicy fingers the great sun sets a ruby! A dark stain of the common people makes then brown like the nipples of the women of yesterday, but it is the backs of these Hands which every proud Rebel desires to kiss! Marvelous, they have paled in the great sunshine full of love of the cause on the bronze casing of machine-guns throughout insurgent Paris! Ah, sometimes, O blessed Hands, at your wrists, Hands where our never-sobered lips tremble, cries out a chain of bright links! And there's a strange and sudden Start in our beings when, sometimes, they try, angelic Hands, to make your sunburn fade away by making your fingers bleed!
Reviewed by Alexander Shaumyan (Reader)
Reviewed on October 29, 2002
Excellent. Or as Rimbaud wrote:
Jeanne-Marie a des mains fortes,
Mains sombres que l'été tanna,
Mains pâles comme des mains mortes.
- Sont-ce des mains de Juana?
Josie your hands will always be full of life just like your brain they are programmed in a forever mode;-) and I get to read you for an eternity...so there!
Those hands no matter their looks, turns out wonderful talent for the world to view. They belong to a Master of words, which makes them a masterpiece of art,,,Lisa
Reviewed by Floria Kelderhouse (Reader)
Reviewed on October 29, 2002
And they are wonderful hands to be writing like this Josephine. I love this, a little humor and a lot of real life. Floria
PI novel set in Manhattan during the 1980s when art galleries and model agencies were the two most glamorous businesses in the world. Dangerously well written.
Read Chapter 1 here: https://www.lit4u.com/art-and-beauty-chapter-1/
Literary Titan
PI novel set in Manhattan during the 1980s when art galleries and model agencies were the two most glamorous businesses in the world. Dangerously well written.
Read Chapter 1 here: https://www.lit4u.com/art-and-beauty-chapter-1/
Literary Titan
"We walked in on a surreal scene. There are few words, if any, to accurately describe the abject horror..."
What Jeannie and Kevin McDonough saw was a wanted, multi-state serial killer about to take his next victim - their own daughter. W
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I wrote something very similar about seeing my wife's hands that now are looking like her mother's. Time rushes by doesn't it?
Youth is indeed wasted on the young. Good stuff. Gregg
Neptune
wow
wow
dear alex i've a sad wont to forever hang up my pen, such beauty here from rimbaud, so majestic almost a crime to appear on the same page as my meager scratchings.
beautiful
thank you
josie
Jeanne-Marie's Hands
Jeanne-Marie has strong hands; dark hands tanned by the summer, pale hands like dead hands. Are they the hands of Donna Juana? Did they get their dusky cream colour sailing on pools of sensual pleasure? Have they dipped into moons, in ponds of serenity? Have they drunk heat from barbarous skies, calm upon enchanting knees? Have they rolled cigars, or traded in diamonds? Have they tossed golden flowers at the glowing feet of Madonnas? It is the black blood of belladonnas that blazes and sleeps in their palms.
Hands which drive the diptera with which the auroral bluenesses buzz, towards the nectars? Hands which measure out poisons? Oh what Dream has stiffened them in pandiculations? Some extraordinary dream of the Asias, of Khenghavars or Zions? These hands have neither sold oranges nor become sunburnt at the feet of the gods: these hands have never washed the napkins of heavy babies without eyes.
These are not the hands of a tart, nor of working women with round foreheads burnt by a sun which is drunk with the smell of tar, in woods that sink of factories. These are benders of backbones; hands that never work harm; more inevitable than machines, stronger than carthorses! Stirring like furnaces, shaking off all their chills of fear, their flesh sings Marseillaises, and never Eleisons!
They could grasp your necks, O evil women; they could pulverize your hands, noblewomen; your infamous hands full of white and of carmine. The splendour of these hands of love turns the heads of the lambs! On their spicy fingers the great sun sets a ruby! A dark stain of the common people makes then brown like the nipples of the women of yesterday, but it is the backs of these Hands which every proud Rebel desires to kiss! Marvelous, they have paled in the great sunshine full of love of the cause on the bronze casing of machine-guns throughout insurgent Paris! Ah, sometimes, O blessed Hands, at your wrists, Hands where our never-sobered lips tremble, cries out a chain of bright links! And there's a strange and sudden Start in our beings when, sometimes, they try, angelic Hands, to make your sunburn fade away by making your fingers bleed!
Jeanne-Marie a des mains fortes,
Mains sombres que l'été tanna,
Mains pâles comme des mains mortes.
- Sont-ce des mains de Juana?