Spectacle

I lie on my bed
stare at the ceiling
little white paint nubs
frozen mid-drop.

I take my glasses
off. The ceiling
indiscernible white
mass. It could be
a cloud. It could
be an iceberg.

I extend my arm
toward the ceiling,
hand horizontal.
Slowly bring my hand
closer to my face.
My eyes strain
for the moment
at which features
are clear.

When i can finally see
my hand is one pen length
away from my eye.
And if there weren't glasses,
no vision correction.

I am a stegosaurus stumbling
in shit.
I am a caveman reading walls
face pressed against the rock, my nose
calloused from years of scraping reading.


I would never have seen
a face. In dark or light
I would squint, squint, squint.
I would be a blind man that sees
light and nothing more.

At one pen length
all the lines, tributaries
flowing into large rivers
spilling into my wrist,
like i was on the edge
of a knife fight.
The knife barely reaching
my hand.

My hand is factory made.
Strips of flesh are flattened,
cut into thinnest slices.
The man at the end of the assembly
line works with minuscule tweezers.
He lays one strip next to another,
carefully stitches them together.
He works quickly until he gets
to the fingers. Now he has to wrap
the skin tightly around itself;
an ascending promontory.

The night falls and he clicks
on his helmet light, adjusts
his magnifying glass.
The finger nails rattle against
the metal of the conveyor belt.
The man pares the nails down
with a miniature knife,
fits them to the ends;
fingers with super glue.

The hand complete,
the man takes his helmet off,
looks at his work.
He sees that it is good,
but he wouldn't want
anyone else to look at it
under a microscope.