The Man with No Hands

a man with no hands
came to my writing class,
sat there awhile
before he told me
he forgot to bring a pen
he is from San Bernardino
where I was born
at a hospital that squarely faces
a cemetery to the north
where my grandpa and grandma are buried
in a spot without a headstone
I know, because one day a few years ago
I went there, with Tarah, then 16
and went a little headfirst
into emotional promiscuity
when I discovered the plot was unmarked,
just a lumpy spot beneath a pine tree
a kindly golf cart driver,
the man who makes the rounds
on the neat little roads
day by day
to ensure
that no one steals a body
came up to me, hands shoving
his shirt into his pants,
offered to help,
Tarah said he was
checking out my ass
as I bent over the grass
and licking his lips at her,
No matter,
we ended up finding
the site, and it made me feel
exhumed, by paperweight,
a few lines for a few poems
pinned down
before a Santa Ana wind
molests the pages at the fringe
and the print becomes unreadable
the hand forgets to move
the mind remembers
its awful phantom pain
of limbs removed
to make way
for new stories
on the body
of an amputee, nothing to lose
and so I offer the man
a handful of goddamn pens:
purple, black or blue

Ruth Nolan c 2009 Ruth Nolan