Issue > Poetry
Monica Hand

Monica Hand

Monica A. Hand is the author of me and Nina (Alice James Books, 2012). Her poems have been published in Mead: The Magazine of Literature & Libations, Pluck! Journal of Affrilachian Arts and Culture, Pleiades, Oxford American, Spoon River Poetry Review, Black Renaissance Noire and The Sow’s Ear. She has a MFA in Poetry and Poetry in Translation from Drew University and currently is in the doctoral program at the University of Missouri - Columbia.

Mask Of Wires


1
Her face a mask of wires and tubes,                              
her one eye a cloudy Cyclops',                              
her inhales and exhales—twisted, crude,                              
her breath—my light—stops.                              

I sit beside her bed                                   
smell her rancid sweat                                        
hold her scratch-less breath                                   
watch her metronome—rest.


2
As if, his hand had slipped; as if
it had acted with a will all
its own; as if it governed itself;
as if it were not sculpt

from his design, not his crime;
as if, he told the truth
as if, he were not its head regulator
as if he were not the bald bastard slime

holder; as if, he were not the dark
river snake, wriggly worm that
that struck her clay face,
as if it were not his mark,

his tattoo, his iron smile
for all to see; as if she
were not;  as if she were not
my mother.

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