Member-only story
A Bag of Hands
Chapbook prize winner of Rattle chapbook contest
A BAG OF HANDS
Jalisco, Mexico.
In a black plastic bag:
12 severed hands
removed from their owners, for thievery, por rateros,
and put in this bag, the kind of bag
you put beer in from Osco, filled with ice
but no ice for these hands, rancid, rotting
in the heat, flies, dried blood.
I’ve always hated my hands, small, red, wrinkly,
old man hands.
When I was in 3rd grade I looked
at my classmates’ hands and mine
were different. Ugly, deformed. Self-loathing.
Most of all I envied dark smooth hands,
Indian hands. I thought
they were beautiful. And now 50 years later
I’m a taxi driver and I see this bag of hands
they found in Mexico
as a punishment
and a warning.
For 3 days I’ve been looking at these hands.
I think of that Sherwood Anderson story I read long ago
