Karen Skolfield
poet, author of two collections, and U.S. Army veteran; Poet Laureate of Northampton (2019-2021); winner of the Massachusetts Book Award in Poetry, Barnard Women Poets Prize, PEN New England Award in poetry, and First Book Award from Zone 3 Press; teaches writing to engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst; her poems can be found in Alaska Quarterly Review, Baltimore Review, Boulevard, Carolina Quarterly, Cimarron Review, The Cincinnati Review, Crazyhorse, Guernica, Indiana Review, Iowa Review, Missouri Review, New Ohio Review, Pleiades, Ploughshares, POETRY Magazine, Shenandoah, Sugar House Review, Superstition Review, Washington Square Review, and others
“Not having arms takes so much away from you. Even your personality, you
know. You talk with your hands. You do everything with your hands.”
– Brendan Marrocco, Iraq war vet and double arm transplant recipient
Even grafted limbs sigh
when the rains come.
The hands, those twin divining rods,
may tremble in the presence
of an old love. Now they’re the arms
of a veteran. The hair that grows
from the arms a different shade.
Since the transplant he writes left handed.
He waits for the hands to reveal
their previous life as farmer or electrician.
By a piano he pauses to see
if the wrists rise to the music.
If the knuckles love the baseball.
If the fist curls in anger. Before:
did he drum his fingers on the desk?
Was the salute quite so crisp?
On its own, the pinky angles to the teacup.
It’s the giver of these arms speaking
whenever he debones a fish or juggles.
Every time a tennis ball comes down
it sits in the palm for a moment,
then rises again.
“Double Arm Transplant” reprinted from Battle Dress: Poems by Karen Skolfield Copyright © 2019 by Karen Skolfield. Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.
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