from The Right Hand
Every pin is a tender path.
Every arrow begins to sew.
The skin, not the mind, creates the soul.
Every arrow begins to sew.
The skin, not the mind, creates the soul.
All the nerve passageways crowd
Into a finger’s whorl.
A nexus: metropolitan.
A city in a palm.
Into a finger’s whorl.
A nexus: metropolitan.
A city in a palm.
Her hand moved slowly tectonically across my trunk
The other hand beneath my back was cradled an asymptote
West-East, east-west a lower premonition
Breathe with this I told myself the wind
have done
The other hand beneath my back was cradled an asymptote
West-East, east-west a lower premonition
Breathe with this I told myself the wind
have done
thus skin is the portal
the laminate the barrier
the reef against the system
or lesser systematic churn
What it may conduct I know
a harp amid the tremors
the laminate the barrier
the reef against the system
or lesser systematic churn
What it may conduct I know
a harp amid the tremors
And skin is an organ
Aeolian it bundles strums
Vesuvian it kindles
When pierced it will swarm
Aeolian it bundles strums
Vesuvian it kindles
When pierced it will swarm
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Christina Pugh has published five books of poems including Stardust Media (University of Massachusetts Press, 2020), winner of the Juniper Prize for Poetry; and Perception (Four Way Books, 2017), named one of the top poetry books of 2017 by Chicago Review of Books. Her poems have appeared in The Atlantic, Poetry, Kenyon Review, Yale Review, and many other publications. A former Guggenheim fellow in poetry and Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome, she is a professor in the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
These poems are taken from a longer sequence titled The Right Hand, which was inspired by acupuncture, bodywork, and Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s sculpture of St. Teresa in Ecstasy in Rome. The Right Hand was a recent finalist for the National Poetry Series.
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