The Hands of Strangers by Janice Harrington

Author:Janice Harrington
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BOA Editions Ltd.

that the body loses interest and refuses,

at last, to keep its wall. The blood slows,

the skin thins, a scratch on an old woman’s arm

widens into a door. Carefully, she steps through.

FRICTION’S FLOWERS

Old age is the time of blooming,

and nursing homes flower in all seasons:

yellow tulips on an old woman’s housedress,

chrysanthemum tissues tucked

into a palsied fist, and at the nurse’s station

the falsely named amaryllis, bright

trumpets atop a pedestal of stalk.

From a distance, even bedsores have petals,

are calendulas, are daisies, are bed roses

embossed upon hip or buttock or shoulder,

proving that the body is bud, the skin—leaf.

The body is bloom, the skin—petal,

at least from a distance. The aide

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