Hand that could be mine: withered, dead. Hand of Bible

paper skin and brittle bones. Hand of heebie-jeebies. Haunted

house appendage, apocryphal simulacra glittering in Byzantine gems.

I myself cannot press my hands in prayer

or open pill bottles. My body is childproofed.

Siena’s cattedrale assures us it's the saint’s mano autentica,

the hand of John the Baptist, the hand that baptized Christ.

A Serbian monastery and Turkish palace also claim to haveThe Baptist’s hands.

With three hands, John the Baptist could be the patron saint of handjobs.

If I were canonized, I’d be painted cradling my severed hands.

When I lived in Miami, cold snaps triggered TV warnings

of frozen iguanas tumbling from banyans.

Fate cracked my body. I leak yolk.

Why shouldn’t it feed me?

In Faust, Goethe writes, One mind is enough for a thousand hands,

which is how I know he didn’t chop his own onions.

Hey. I wish I’d recorded us fucking before my injuries.

I replay sex memories like sports highlights, geyser and oyster rising,

windswept surfspray sparked at sunset, sparkler, trumpet.

Why miser in misery, mister pig? Every Sunday after church my minister father

watched rich athletes give each other brain damage. He loved

the ones who threw good and thanked God.

I once wrote a Craigslist ad: DIRECT OBJECT SEEKING BENIGN SUBJECT

and got some freaky replies. Sometimes, on good days, I curl my hands into you,

taste the sacrament of our bodies given for each other.

During hospital visits, I watched Dad lower cross-stamped wafers

into dying mouths. If Jesus still feels the nails,

we could match parking placards. In my suffering, I tried to drop

religion, yet it clung like gum. I finally wiped it under a pew.

Presently, the desiccated relic ignores my silent query:

my pain remains a-paining, cannoning my body to ions,

no platter-served resolution, no miraculous doves

to shatter my body’s rose windows and armatures.

We’re hungry. You look up the closest McDonald’s.  

Before leaving the cathedral, I wave the old hand

goodbye.