My name is Pardigo Tuma and one of the things I love about reading poetry is that somebody

somewhere, the poet, sat usually by themselves and wrote this alone, maybe by hand, first

before it was printed and the intimacy of that, the musculature of that and the time that

that took and the energy it took moves me.

Consider the hands that write this letter by Arsali Skirmai and she credits the poem

being written after Marina Wilson.

Consider the hands that write this letter.

Left palm pressed flat against paper as we have done before over my heart in peace

or reverence to the sea.

Some beautiful thing I saw once, felt once, snow falling like rice flung from the giant's

wedding, or strangest of strange birds.

And consider then the right hand and how it is a fist within which a sharpened utensil

similar to the way I've held a spade, the horse's reins looping, the very fists I've

seen from roads through Lime in Estelle.

For years I've come to sit this way, one hand open, one hand closed like a farmer who

puts down seeds and gathers up, food will come from that farming.

Or yes, it is like the way I've danced with my left hand opened around a shoulder, my

right hand closed inside of another hand and how I pray.

I pray for this to be my way.

Sweet work alluded to in the body's position to its paper.

Left hand, right hand like an open eye and eye closed.

One hand flat against the trap door, the other hand knocking, knocking.

...