Left Handed Poem
“His left hand shall lie under my head and his right shall embrace me.”
—Song of Solomon 8:3
Still my fingers tremble,
waiting for the swift smack
of that wooden crucifix swung
like a sabre against my knuckles,
Mother Celeste so desperate
to beat the devil out of me.
All that autumn I cried, I bled
until I learned to hold the pencil
in my other hand, the good hand,
learned to write the words she wanted
on the ruled paper she taped
to the desk in front of me,
those words I remember all too well—
punishment, pain, suffering, sin.
Words pounded
into the flesh
of my left hand, the hand
that can barely hold this pencil,
the hand that has written
this poem for her.
